I'm in pursuit of what cannot be achieved: perfection.

I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure.

I don't take advances for my books.

We don't protect our young, and we tolerate predators of our own species.

People are pushing against the fabric of society all the time.

No politician is threatened by the child protective constituency, because it does not exist.

My life is triage.

Journalism is what maintains democracy. It's the force for progressive social change.

The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

I don't sign contracts for my books.

I don't understand people whose gratification is a BMW. You don't know what joy is until you see a kid who was tortured get adopted by a family.

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

I'm in pursuit of what cannot be achieved: perfection.

A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.

Victimizers of children are the enemies of any so-called society.

Building a mechanical device for its appearance is like putting lace on a bowling ball.

I think people should be consumers of journalism.

The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape.

All children are born pure egoists. They perceive their needs to the exclusion of all others. Only through socialization do they learn that some forms of gratification must be deferred and others denied.

Ask any experienced defense lawyer: the real risks are for an accused person who is innocent. A guilty defendant has many more options available.

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story.

Crime takes the pulse of a culture. It tells us the truth about us as a species.

Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can't. A bully wants to beat somebody; he doesn't want to fight somebody.

I did criminal defense work part-time, and that paid the bills for representing abused and neglected children... and for defending in juvenile court those kids the 'child protective system' had missed when it had the chance.

I hate bullies. I hate them. I'm not good enough with words to describe how much I hate them.

In some neighborhoods, if you want to walk down the streets, you've got two choices - look down, or look hard.

There is no Constitutional right to prey on others. The Internet is just a piece of technology, like the telephone. Society has the right to modify its uses.

While early childhood experiences may impel, they do not compel. In the end, evil is a matter of choice.

Without question, I've either got to be a writer, or I fail.

Life is a fight, but not everyone's a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.

Camouflage doesnt help when the other guy is willing to defoliate the whole jungle.

Life is a ght but not everyones a ghter. Otherwise bullies would be an endangered species.

Most investigators dont even know what the word means. You stop the cops from using informants and the only crimes theyd ever solve would be those by deranged postal workers who come to work once too often.

If a train is coming at you, closing your eyes won't save you ... but if you look right at it, you at least have a chance to jump.

Complete and total perfection will come about only when we feel that our perfection is no perfections as long as the rest of humanity remains imperfect.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

Tech Jacket shares the same tone as Invincible, but the subject matter is very different. Where Invincible is about perfection, Tech Jacket is about flaws.

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

I'm chasing perfection.

The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal.

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

For the last 30 years our cinemas have been ruled by science fiction and horror. We've had some very good Fantasy films in that time period, but for my tastes I still haven't seen fantasy done to absolute perfection. That is the hope I have in this project.

I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.

By this way you may dress all sorts of horses in the utmost perfection, if you know how to practice it; a thing that is very easy in the hands of a master.

So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

Perfection is perfectly simple; fouling things up requires true skill.

Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.