I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

I put on such a good show, the story is outrageous, and people don't want to hear that I'm basically a reasonable human being. As long as it continues to get me print, I'll continue to perform in an exuberant manner.

I have a very intense marriage.

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

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

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, I have thought about other things throughout the years.

Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer.

My mother and I will continue on some level that I haven't determined yet. I think my mother's a great character, and I have to say that giving my mother to the world has to be the biggest thrill of my writing career.

I'm clenched down, I'm locked in on it, which is my general approach to life.

Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.

I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.

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

I haven't been to a movie in a year and a half.

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.

As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.

When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.

I am the most well-adjusted human being I know. I started out this investigation as a very happy man with a great career. I've got the life people dream about: I am rich, I am famous, I've got a fabulous marriage to an absolutely, spell-bindingly brilliant woman.

The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

An unexpected benefit of my career in biochemistry has been travel.

I'm sure once my career's over, when I look back when I'm older, I can maybe appreciate it a little bit more.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I have been driven demented in my career.

The blues is something separate from what I do. They connect at certain spots, but blues is different. I wouldn't put it in with what my career has been. That would be a whole separate wing.

I wanted to be an actress. In college I was a serious feminist and very political. I was determined to get one thing out of my career and that was respect. I didn't want money. I didn't care about fame.

It could be my downfall, but I don't think it is - Hollywood is run on perception, and if you stray off the path of what you want to do with your career, it's suicide.

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.

Warren Beatty took an interest in my career at one point.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962. The second biggest break since then is getting out of them.

Sometimes you get caught up in what's going on around you. The reality is that you are just a regular person. At some point, the career will be over, the bright lights turn off. That can come back to haunt you if you're not just a regular guy.

The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

Music is the career I'm lucky enough to get paid for, but I have other desires and passions.

I think to just single out a highlight of Elvis's career is pretty much impossible. As far as being a fan of his, a lifetime fan, there were just too many highlights.

Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman's natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.

I have probably purchased fifty 'hot tips' in my career, maybe even more. When I put them all together, I know I am a net loser.

I've spent my career trying to help people without connections understand what's going on so that they have a chance of getting a fair shake from the connected and the powerful.

If I had my career to play over, one thing I'd do differently is swing more. Those 1,200 walks I got, nobody remembers them.