Michael Connelly Quotes

There is no client as scary as an innocent man.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.

There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.

Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.

I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.

It's only a wonderful world if you can make it that way. There are no street signs pointing to Paradise Road.

In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.

How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.

There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than any cause, though it's the cause that is usually most vilified.

The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice.

A newspaper is the center of a community, it's one of the tent poles of the community, and that's not going to be replaced by Web sites and blogs.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.

Don't go growing a conscience on me," I said. "I've been down that road. It doesn't lead you to anything good.

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

The best crime novels are not about how a detective works on a case; they are about how a case works on a detective.

...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.

What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures?

Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.

Everybody counts or nobody counts

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

As a bassist he could never really be a sideman. He was always the anchor. He drove the beat. even if it was behind Miles Davis'a horn.

Momentum was momentum, whether you found it in music or on the street or in the beat of your own heart.

There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.

It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.

Deep in my heart it still feels like I'm a journalist even though I haven't worked for a paper and carried a press pass for 14 years.

I don't think anyone will believe me, but I've never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book.

I never miss L.A. because I'm there enough.

I feel I'm functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I'm trying to get the world accurate.

That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.

She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

We're all seeking order. We're all seeking control.

The character can never be static from book to book. People might think you just come up with a new plot and stick this guy in. Well, he has to be as new as the plot every time.

Maybe it has something to do with being a reporter for a long time that I don't look to newspapers and television and so forth for inspiration most of the time.

I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.

The writing ethic was influenced - when you have to write every day, there's no such thing as writer's block.

When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books.

As a reporter, you develop an ear for dialogue because it's your job to capture it accurately.

I'm not 'Mr. No-By-The-Book.' I just want to make sure the character is by the book.

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them.

Can't complain because nobody listens.

Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.

You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.