Some people don’t respond to civility.

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.

I suppose, like most young people nowadays, boredom is what you dread most in the world, and yet, I can assure you, there are worse things.

I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up.

Things of today? Deeds which are harvest for Eternity!

Let today be the day you give up who you've been for who you can become.

Women's Day Women are the real architects of society.

When I think of those who have influenced my life the most, I think not of the great but of the good.

it's good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people

It is manlike to punish but godlike to forgive. [Ger., Menschlich ist es bloss zu strafen Aber gottlich zu verzeihn.]

I always loved to paint. As a kid, I liked to dip my paintbrush in black ink. They gave colors to me to use, but I didn't like them very much.

Social sin is the crystallization ... of individuals' sins into permanent structures that keeps sin in being and makes its force to be felt by the majority of people.