It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world.

it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.

Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.

The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

We become comfortable saying that there's nothing new, and then something like Malarky comes along, which is new and old and different and familiar, but ultimately itself, comfortable in its own skin, wise and smart and crazy-sexy or maybe sexy-crazy-well, you just have to read it to understand. It's a novel that sets its own course, sure and steady, even when it seems like it might be about to go over the edge of the world.

I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes.