He looked at the pain and he set himself apart from it. He saw it, examined it, identified it, corralled it. He isolated it. He challenged it. You against me? Dream on, pal. He built borders for it. Then walls. He built walls and forced the pain behind them and then he moved the walls inward, compressing the pain, crushing it, boxing it in, limiting it, beating it.

Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write.

It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.

I need a stimulating environment to write because my books are driven at 100 miles per hour at a time.

The thriller is not a recent invention. It probably goes back to the dawn of storytelling.

The third guy was different. He was what you got when you ate squirrels for four generations. Smarter than a rat and tougher than a goat, and jumpier than either one.

Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it.