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

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" With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop. "

" 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. "

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

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

" When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?' "

" 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. "

" Virgil Flowers fishes in the St. Croix where I fish for muskies near my house. "

" Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations. "

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

" 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'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. "

" There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting. "

" 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'm not saying that photographers are dumber than other people, but they are the folks who walk around with brilliant white lights in nighttime riots. "

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

" Things fall apart and happen out of stupidity and carelessness. "

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

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

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

" When I was reporting crime... I never had the sense of clockwork conspiracies or some kind of imposing order of evil. What I sensed was things just sort of falling apart. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" When you're writing two books a year, you really need some time off and don't want to use that down time for touring. I do like talking with readers, though; they can tell you important stuff. "

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

" Before the Internet became so powerful, I toured extensively. With the rise of the Internet, touring apparently has become less important. "

" I'm somewhat depressive. "

" If readers tell you that stretches of dialogue or narrative were too long, that they couldn't tell who was talking, that's something that can be fixed. "