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" A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made. "

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" My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write. "

" I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere. "

" That's what a good crime novelist - any good novelist - should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight. "

" In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it. "

" I don't find any real rivalries with crime and thriller writers anyway. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but for the most part the writers I compete with, if you want to use that word, it's a pretty friendly rivalry. I think we all realise that the boat rises and sinks together. "

" No characters in 'Stay Close,' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer. "

Black And White

" I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do. "

" If I don't write, I hate myself. Simple as that. My life is out of balance. "

" I don't necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It's caring about something that's utterly meaningless. "

" When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age. "

" I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good. "

" I'm 48 years old, not a kid anymore by any definition, but here is a universal truth that every adult at some point will realize: We are all always 17 years old, waiting for our lives to begin. "

" When you like something and you're pretty good at it and you can make a living doing it, you don't ask why. You just count your blessings and go with it. "

" I once worked as a tour guide in the Costa del Sol of Spain. "

" I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am. "

" The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don't do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it's due October 1. "

" The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me. "

" I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, I love to fool you a third time. And just when you think it's all over, I have what I call that Carrie hand-out-of-the-grave moment. Just when you think it's all over, I'm going to hit you with just one more. I can't help myself. "

" The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea - wink, wink. "

" Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties. "

" Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed. "

" I'm not a big sports fan. "

" If I'm not writing well, I'm not happy. If I'm not spending enough time with my family, I'm not happy. If I'm not connecting to friends or if I don't work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme. "

" I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It's very thin, it's made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair. "

" I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that. "

" I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.' "

" I can write pretty much anywhere if you give me time and some quiet. The home is not usually the best place because I have four children. It's usually pandemonium around here! "

" 'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness, and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills, or it won't work. "

" Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft. "

" Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell. "