I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

There's something about being able to literally consume a work of art - then to divide all that pleasure of it - because it's a memory. A great wine for me is a memory, it's an extraordinary experience.

Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon

Yeah. Floyd is his batman." His what?" Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant." You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition.

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.