I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking book….

When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them.

I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and….

I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - s….

I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had..

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find….

Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?.

I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost..

Take what you want and pay for it, says God. You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and you will have to pay it..

But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons..

What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented ….

Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK..

I don't do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you're already halfway down..

Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wro….

You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone..

I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they e….

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuf….

Our entire society is based on discontent. People wanting more and more and more. Being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their….

For a moment, I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars, and I knew, beyond an….

Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar t….

A bore or an uggo might manage not to get up anyone's nose, but if a girl's got brains and looks and personality, she's going to piss someone off, so….