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.

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.

All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away-by standing still

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

I remember being very psyched for our first tours, despite not knowing about the endless stream of situations and setbacks that we'd face.

He (Gil Hodges) fields better on one leg than anybody else I got on two.

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.

There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

What Bollywood lacks is scripts. A lot of the films are copies of western films.

I didn't really like the taste of booze. I liked the effect it did on me. But I can't say I savored a glass full of Chablis Chablis 1932. I drank whatever s - - was in front of me and got me buzzed.

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.

One must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning.