I think there's a general misconception that anything written quickly lacks quality, and I don't believe that.

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.

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

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.

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

Just because you have been through a bad experience does not give you the ticket to keep going back to that situation over and over again and dramatizing it out of proportion.

The last hour from midnight had lost half its quarters, and the stars went lifting up the great minutes...

BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.

It takes a long time to fully become who you are.

Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.

Only God can change a season of war into a season of peace. Would you agree with me in prayer for peace?

Ronald Reagan was able to accomplish extraordinary purposes for our country without having to put our military forces into conflict.

Even behind prison walls I can see the heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon

My style of leadership is to lead with the lightest touch that I possibly can.

I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.