You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.

...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.

I'm a pretty harsh critic when it comes to my own stuff or things that come from my work.

You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.

I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.

I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.