Grief is as contagious as a yawn.

You kill people you hate or you kill in rage or you kill to get even, but you don't kill someone you're indifferent to.

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

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.

any mystery writer is both magician and moralist ... two species of artist in short supply.

The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.

I've never known anyone yet who doesn't suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around... We're all eight years old again and anything is possible.