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.

How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.

...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.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

Can't complain because nobody listens.

Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

To write more from memory and to be more creative - I think - because I am still writing about Los Angeles but I can't walk out my door and immediately drive to places I am writing about. So I think it has been a very good change for me after 11 books to start writing this way.