People with children and people with their own business always pick up a ringing phone.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.

When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Well, me don't swim too tough so me don't go in the water too deep.

When I was coming up through the ranks, not that many people carried a lot money of money on them. This was before checks and credit cards.

The usual way - a little wine, a little dinner.

Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.

Trusting Him to work out your circumstances instead of using your own might and power will bring deep satisfying joy into your life.

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.

I just love being in the U.K.

If one is honest there is no need to remember.

By the time we made "Abbey Road", John and I were openly critical of each other's music, and I felt John wasn't much interested in performing anything he hadn't written himself.

I didn't want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn't like it. I always wanted to do other things.