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" In writing on the page, you can be a bit elliptical, but on TV, you can't dance around stuff. You either show it, or you don't. "
Michael Connelly
Page
Dance
You
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" I write puzzles and mysteries. Nothing too highfalutin. "
Michael Connelly
Mysteries
Too
Puzzles
" I first discovered Tampa in my 20s when I met my wife, who was living there, and I instantly fell in love with the city. It's somewhere between a big city and small town, so you get the feeling of both. "
Michael Connelly
You
Love
Small
" I watched 'Kojak' religiously with my father. It was a great bonding time. He loved shows where the stakes were high. Life and death, justice prevailing, things like that. I think that helped set me on the path to what I do now. "
Michael Connelly
Life
Death
Father
" I chose deliberately for Harry Bosch to age chronologically with the books. "
Michael Connelly
Deliberately
Age
Books
" There are nineteen Harry Bosch books, and someone told me if you add up the descriptions of Harry from all of them, it would come to less than three pages. He's very elliptically described over the two decades during which the novels occur. I did that by intention. "
Michael Connelly
Me
Two
Intention
" I'm not Mr. Hollywood. I'm a book writer. "
Michael Connelly
Writer
Book
Hollywood
" When I went home at 20 to tell my parents, 'I don't want to be an engineer, I want to try and write books,' I was braced for, 'That's not gonna happen.' But I didn't get that response, and maybe it was because of my dad's experience of having an artistic dream and having to put it aside. "
Michael Connelly
Dream
Experience
Home
" I get up to write while it's still dark, 5 or 5:30. I start by editing and rewriting everything I did the day before, and that gives some momentum for the day. "
Michael Connelly
Start
Dark
Day
" As a writer, you look for inspiration wherever you can get it. "
Michael Connelly
Wherever
Writer
You
" A good day to me is writing from 6 A.M. 'til noon with a break to take my daughter to school. After lunch, if I still feel the momentum, I'll hit it again. "
Michael Connelly
Good Day
School
Good
" I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps. "
Michael Connelly
Writing
Up
Think
" There is a prevailing school of thought that something good must take time, sometimes years to create and hone. I have always felt that the books I have written fastest have been my best - because I caught an unstoppable momentum in the writing. "
Michael Connelly
School
Writing
Time
" I admit my reading time is limited because I can write in the situations and places where people usually read. But reading is the fuel - it's inspiring - so I try to keep the tank full. What happens most of the time is I binge read. I will put aside a day or two to do nothing but read. "
Michael Connelly
Nothing
Try
Time
" In the real world, some defense lawyers never have an innocent client in their whole career. "
Michael Connelly
World
Career
Innocent
" I like stories about people who have to go into darkness for a good reason and then have to figure out how to deal with the darkness that seeps into their souls. "
Michael Connelly
Darkness
Good
Go
" I not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked. "
Michael Connelly
Read
Crime
Fiction
" The criminal defense attorney is misunderstood if not despised by most of society. It doesn't matter if we believe in our adversarial system and the ideal that everyone charged with a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. Ideals give away to reality - defense lawyers working loopholes and angles to get their clients off. "
Michael Connelly
Lawyers
Society
Believe
" 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. "
Michael Connelly
Writing
Seeing
Think
" A newspaper is the center of a community, it's one of the tent poles of the community, and that's not going to be replaced by Web sites and blogs. "
Michael Connelly
Center
Newspaper
Community
" I trust the readers to build their own visual images. To me, that's part of the wonder of reading. "
Michael Connelly
Me
Wonder
Build
" One of the great things about fiction is you can use an issue and describe it in human terms. "
Michael Connelly
You
Things
Human
" Now I'm writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing. "
Michael Connelly
Back
Research
Process
" I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters. "
Michael Connelly
Because
Books
Hollywood
" The LAPD, like most police departments, is a male-dominated bureaucracy. A woman faces a lot of pushback. "
Michael Connelly
Woman
Most
Police
" Ross McDonald had a greater influence on me than any other writer. His style of writing, the repeated theme of the past coming out to grab somebody, that's very attractive to me as a reader and, now, as a writer. "
Michael Connelly
Me
Style
Past
" It's about being fair. It's about Black Lives Matter. Yes, they matter. Everybody counts or nobody counts, and I think if more cops had the philosophy of Harry Bosch, we'd have less of these situations happening. "
Michael Connelly
Matter
Think
Philosophy
" When you're a detective on the midnight shift, you don't have a specialty: you roll on any time they need a detective, whether it's big or small. "
Michael Connelly
Small
Time
You
" As far as characters in fiction that I really admire - it's pretty strong to say you would wish that you had created another character - but I'll throw out Will Graham, the protagonist in 'Red Dragon,' a book I've read several times. "
Michael Connelly
You
Book
Character
" My whole reputation and creative thought as a novelist is really wrapped around Harry Bosch, so he's near and dear. "
Michael Connelly
Creative
He
Reputation
" I learned to write crime novels by reading people I hoped to emulate: people like James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, Joseph Wambaugh, and Sue Grafton. "
Michael Connelly
Like
People
Write