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

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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?' "

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

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

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

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

" You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life. "

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

" 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. "

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

Law Enforcement

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

" 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. "

" I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers. "

" A lot of my friends were retiring from the newspaper business, and the newspaper pensions are not enormous. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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