And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

Tell me anything. Tell me everything. Revoke our time apart. Love me fierce in danger.

L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

I learn things late-and only the hard way.

If your leadership is truly grounded in love, you’ll always land in the category of a good leader.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

The key to success is failure

They can boo me, yell at me, and throw peanuts at me, as long as they pay to get in.

I appreciate the people there thinking about me, and I look forward to coming back to Paris for that occasion.

I personally believe, as church law sets out, that sanctions are an absolute last resort, particularly penal sanctions of depriving people of the sacraments.

And here in America rival newspapermen attack each other on sight?

My brand of fantasy is completely devoid of the traditional notions of magic as ritual. Instead I see the fantastic as a meta-layer of existence beyond the real world.