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'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.

The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.

We all agree that we've got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they're never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

As a result of my study, I came to the conclusion that a common supreme authority was undesirable.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

I had learned many years ago in private business never to take responsibility without adequate authority; and the new Secretary of Defense, as budgets were sharply cut, quickly found that out.

The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows.

God is the King. In him exists all legal authority.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.

I prize the conditions under which I have lived because they have permitted me to choose my opportunities, to inquire into such matters as interested me, and to publish what I believed to be true, uncontrolled by any central authority.

I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority.

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.