Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" I'm somewhat depressive. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm an outdoors kind of guy. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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