One of our continuing myths was summed up in Huckleberry Finn: Our escape, what we think of as our escape, is that we can always light out for the te….

I do bookstore signings, and it seems to me that I get a variety of men and women, more women than I'd expect, and grown-ups among my readers..

In a funny way, the stories keep themselves alive by emerging from one another. I like that..

Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?.

Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't….

Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed ….

Parker wasn't supposed to be a series. He was supposed to be one book, and if he was only going to be in one book, I didn't worry about it. And then ….

Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear..

The fictioneer labors under the constraint of plausibility; his inventions must stay within the capacity of the audience to accept and believe. God, ….

I know people who have suffered writer's block, and I don't think I've ever had it. A friend of mine, for three years he couldn't write. And he said ….

Years ago, I heard an interview with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The interviewer said, "Do you still practice?" And he said, "I practice every day." He….

Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten..

The thing that I prefer, when I'm working on a book, is to do a seven-day week, because it's easy to lose some of the details of what you're doing al….

I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again..

In order to hold your faith intact be sure it's kept unsullied by fact..

There are a couple of writers I admired who were very good at giving the character's emotion without stating what that emotion was. Not saying "He wa….

Those 4 guys in the late 60's who attacked a jewel merchant on New York's West 46th St. on the sidewalk, so they could steal his jewel-filled station….

Writing is flat, so if you only have part of one eye working, you still can do the job. It's just that you sit there and you're angry, which doesn't ….

I don't think I would have been a good architect. Really, I have thought about this from time to time, and I might have wound up like my father, who ….

The trouble with real life is, there's no reset button..

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use….