An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.

I like a little danger. Tame danger, controlled by me. It gives me a sense of power, I guess, to take my life in my hands and know damn well I’m not going to lose it.

As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him,, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married.

We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how we can get unhooked before we drown in the stuff.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.