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" 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. "

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

John Sandford

Difference

Book

Get

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

" 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. "

" I'm somewhat depressive. "

John Sandford

Somewhat

Depressive

" 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. "

" 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. "

John Sandford

Look

Kind

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

John Sandford

Sex

Little

" 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'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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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