I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

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.

You totally need to watch the news.""Can't.""Why?""It's too depressing.""Right, because hanging with dead people isn't.

I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.

Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.

But no customer is going to buy based on their existing wage structure.

If someone's trying to intimidate me, male or female, I don't respect them enough to be intimidated.

Honestly, every movie I do in America, the only challenge for me is English. I've done everything already, for me it's pretty easy. Only the English.

I really just like breaking down the barriers, whether it means doing an album with Linkin Park, an album with R. Kelly, or playing at the Brandenburg Gate with Bono.

Unless knowledge is transformed into wisdom, and wisdom is expressed in character; education is a wasteful process.

There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing.