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

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

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

" 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'm an outdoors kind of guy. "

" I was a newspaper editor in the Army, and I know something about the Army PR culture. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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'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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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?' "

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

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

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

Law Enforcement

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "