Being with someone who is smart and gives good advice adds tremendously wonderful elements to your life.

I hate the term "mystery". That's not what I write. I think the Scarpetta novels are much more character-driven than an average puzzle solver. Writing should be like a pane of glass - there's another world on the other side and your vision carries you there, but you're not aware of having passed through a barrier to get there.

The dead have never bothered me. It's the living that I fear.

You have to live where you wake up, even if someone else dreamed you there.

If everybody, every day, would try to do one thing that pulls them beyond themselves the world will start being a better place.

My fans want me to talk to them. And even if they want to be critical, I want to hear what they've got to say.

I'm very, very sensitive to pain and to people who suffer.