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" My literary heroes all wrote about L.A.: Joseph Wambaugh, Ross Macdonald, and Raymond Chandler were the three writers that made me want to be a writer. "

Michael Connelly

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" I connect to the tradition of Irish storytelling. And I think there is something - I can't put my finger on it - something genetic there. Maybe just a need to tell stories. "

Michael Connelly

" I don't put a lot of description in the books because I write books the way I like to read them, and that is I like to build images and be a creative reader, and so I write that way. "

Michael Connelly

" The act of reading a story is sacred, and people build images and all that stuff. "

Michael Connelly

" The three books I've written in Florida about L.A. are my best takes on the physicality of the city, as far as description goes. "

Michael Connelly

" My history is that I will create a character, and they will have a book to themselves, and then I'll integrate the character into the larger world of all my books. "

Michael Connelly

" As a former reporter, I wrote 'The Scarecrow' quickly - I didn't have to think about what the character would do the way I do with Harry Bosch. "

Michael Connelly

" I'm just going to write the best books I can. "

Michael Connelly

" 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

" I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 9/11 in my past two books. "

Michael Connelly

" That's what I like most about writing fiction over journalism: the easy metaphors! "

Michael Connelly

" I don't think anyone will believe me, but I've never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book. "

Michael Connelly

" The TV audience is way bigger than a book audience, and no matter what I do, I'm always thinking if this will help people read my books. "

Michael Connelly

" I not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked. "

Michael Connelly

" 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

" I used to tape over the top corner of my computer screen so I couldn't see what time it was. I like the idea that I'm just with the words and not knowing what's going on with the world, when it's lunch or dinner. "

Michael Connelly

" I think the best way to sell a made-up character is to plant his feet into the real earth. "

Michael Connelly

" It wasn't a decision to become a writer. I wanted to become a writer of crime fiction. I was very specific. "

Michael Connelly

" When you're working on a novel, you never think about how much it would cost to shoot one of your scenes. But that's a huge consideration in film and TV. "

Michael Connelly

" 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

" I was a police reporter, so I got into the worlds that I write about, and I think many of the details in my books come from those days. "

Michael Connelly

" I'm not Mr. Hollywood. I'm a book writer. "

Michael Connelly

" 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

" I never write thinking, 'What would a woman do?' any more than I think, 'What would a man do?' It comes down to what would a solid detective do in these circumstances. "

Michael Connelly

" One of the great things about fiction is you can use an issue and describe it in human terms. "

Michael Connelly

" I feel I'm functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I'm trying to get the world accurate. "

Michael Connelly

" All my writing is fun, and that makes it hard to slow down or walk away. "

Michael Connelly

" 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

" Many writers learned their craft and work ethic at a newspaper. I benefited from that. "

Michael Connelly

" I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes. "

Michael Connelly

" When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books. I was not interested in reading 'The Glass Key' or 'The Maltese Falcon' - stuff that was 40 or 50 years old. "

Michael Connelly