As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, ….

History is a state of yearning. I yearn for Kay Lake throughout this entire thing. There's an essay I've written where I talked about living in the p….

I don't have children. I serve the world and I serve God by living as deep within my work as I can, reveling in the language of other times and putti….

There's none with me, although you've seen me before - I'm outrageous..

Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people..

I was in L.A. in '08. It was a cold Saturday night. I had spread my phone number out to a score of women and was just indulging this sweet, sad, eleg….

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age..

Other people, some other writers, will win certain accolades or sell in far greater numbers than me - and I'm a legitimate best-selling author - but ….

You're grounded!!!! You can't go out and prowl the L.A. streets. You've got to do something more edifying, emboldening and altogether more groovy. Yo….

And the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results - malign ones, as it was - were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism….

I work within the framework of a very concerted, purely driven Protestant Christian mindset. I had dark early circumstances. I went inward. I have a ….

As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me..

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it..

I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian no….

I'm way past the idea of using ideology or political view as a gauge of human character. I simply don't believe it. And many people, I tend to think ….

I wanted to portray a newly democratized, enclosed society. I wanted to show how extraordinarily fluid people are in their embrace of other human bei….

I've created a narrative of the world. I live in the world - tenuously, most times. I've avoided the digital world..

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books..

I like to have fun out there. I work hard, and then I get to cut loose and go out and tour, and I enjoy it. I like to go out and meet the people. I l….

Well, the clues are there. They always are. Which is why when crimes are solved decades after the fact, it's obvious that the clues had always been r….

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any singl….