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" As a journalist, I interviewed people, and you begin to feel different rhythms in speech, and you can use those things to help carve out a character. "

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" There are two worldviews in thriller writing: the paranoid view, like Chuck Logan's, that everything is inside a large clockwork. I like those books; they're intricate and thought out, but my view is that everything is chaotic and stupid. Chaos reigns, and civilized people do what they can to hold it back. "

" These characters are not spontaneous creations. They are engineered down to the last nut and bolt. "

" Books set in Brooklyn and L.A. are often about people who are rootless, who want to go somewhere else. In the Midwest, though, the stories are about people who want to stay where they are - who like where they are. "

" The difference is this: If you write a good book, it'll get published. If you have a great screenplay, there is no guarantee. "

" It's interesting how people are sensitive to language and how it works. "

" Working for the 'Miami Herald' in 1972, I covered street action for both the Republican and Democratic national conventions in Miami and saw probably the most violent conventions ever - more violent than even 1968 in Chicago. "

" People in California don't live in a place so much as they do a condition. "

" People ought to be slapped up side of the head, not always get what they expect. That's why sometimes the bad guy gets away. "

" I have a problem with the way the media deals with a lot of law enforcement issues. "

Law Enforcement

" Women just make interesting characters, especially when you're working against cliches. "

" I really do need the help of other people working with me. "

" Most people like a little sex in their novels. "

" I'm just trying to normalize my life and get ready for the last 20 years or whatever I've got. It's a lot to take care of. "

" If you do outline, you have to be aware of the problems that that kind of thing can cause. "

" Well, I am becoming doddering and old but I have - I'm writing two books a year now. It's like 220,000 words or something like finished, and, honest to God, I can't do that. I really do need the help of, you know, other people working with me. "

" If you actually hang out in the countryside, which I did, it's actually quite peaceful. "

" Most people in protest mobs are pretty sincere and don't want to fight cops or break things. "

" They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly. "

" A lot of journalists are talented enough to write a mystery novel, and I would say that most of the top-end mystery writers actually started out as reporters. But there is more to it than just the writing; there's a learning process, and most journalists aren't willing to do it. "

" I once paddled a canoe the length of the Mississippi River all the way from Itasca to New Orleans. "

" I fear becoming formulaic. Some of my books are. "

" I spend a lot of time wandering around the countryside just looking at people, seeing how everything fits together. "

" Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you'll find it is a very nice piece of writing. "

" I'm somewhat depressive. "

" My kids, who are grown now and living in L.A., are used to me packing up and taking off to somewhere weird. "

" That's my sense of how crime works: that it's not any kind of calculated evil driven by the devil, but just control disintegrating. "

" I've always had a fascination with the technical and small-scale aspects of life - the national media seem to have more interest in the sweeping political views. "

" A lot of cops in fiction are very depressive and are kind of downbeat, and they've got all kinds of existential angst that they're dealing with. "

" Combat stress isn't the only problem for soldiers isolated in Iraq - there are family issues, re-integration issues when soldiers go home on leave, loneliness. "

" I've always thought of myself as a journalist; that was what I did. "