There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write each other letters once a year.

I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world of disasters.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him,, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married.

I think that everyone has something that they will kill for.

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers--strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.

Thai society rarely attempts to control literature in the same way that it vigilantly polices visual art. It's ironic because people in this society are more aware of literature than they are of art.

Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it's in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

We are just about to cross the 400 parts per million threshold.

A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart.

... And the only way to find that honesty is to not overthink it. For your writing to come alive--to be multi-dimensional--you must barter away some control.

There's a market for mysteries for adults. That feeling of opening a book and delving inside and not coming out until you've closed the book.

I'm happier. I guess I made up my mind to be that way.

The true Mason always carries his working tools everywhere.