My job as the writer is to fool you. Your job as the reader is to see if you can catch me at it.

He might be a man without character, but she was a woman without courage. Of the two, which was worse?

Train yourself to listen to that small voice that tells us what's important and what's not.

Grief rolled across the space between us like a wash of salt water.

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.

I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.