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

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.

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.

Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good?

All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.

Religious liberty must be protected in this country. It's a principle upon which we were founded.

All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.

It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.

All my book are my favorites.

If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean.

I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.

The day you die is just like any other, only shorter.

Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.