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" A writer without a reader doesn't exist. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" You can't have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front - or a happy without a sad. "

" I'm thinking of taking up golf, but the idea of spending time with golfers frightens me. "

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

" There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation. "

" 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. "

" I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that. "

" 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 live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. "

" I love stories. When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head. "

" I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted. "

" 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

" 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. "

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

" I'm not a fan of self-help books - how can something be 'self-help' if the book itself is purportedly helping you? "

" Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white. "

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

" Writing is one of the few activities where quantity will inevitably make quality. The more you write, the better you're going to get at it. "

" I never bought the excuse of not having time to write. If you really want to do it, you're either going to find those hours or eventually decide not to be a writer. "

" 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. "

" In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury. "

" And I love the twist. I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, and on the very last page, quite often - very last paragraph sometimes - I like to just play with your perception one more time in a way that makes everything that came before just a little bit different. "

" I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness. "

" Only bad writers think they're good. "

" I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row, and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal, and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is, it makes the series limited, you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis. "

" What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister; I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes. "

" I'm not a big sports fan. "

" 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. "