In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.

I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love.

What is overriding that and most important is that readers generally are interested in a good character. They might be more comfortable with Harry because they think they know him, but they always seem willing to give somebody new a chance.

I realize now I could have gotten a whole book out of that and so I think that was a big mistake. But the truth is you write in the moment and with your head down and there is no way back then that I could have conceived of Harry having the longevity that he has had.

In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.

We want our government to protect us, to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again. We quickly moved to give law enforcement more power to do this. But that now begs the question, did we move to fast? Did we give too much power away? I don't have the answer.

I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 9/11 in my past two books.

A newspaper is the center of a community, it's one of the tent poles of the community, and that's not going to be replaced by Web sites and blogs.

I don't miss being a reporter as a job, but I do miss the everyday interaction with the front line of law enforcement. I still have a cadre of cops who keep me up to date, but I don't have the access I used to.

I feel I'm functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I'm trying to get the world accurate.

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

I never miss L.A. because I'm there enough.

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

I think there'd be huge losses if there weren't newspapers. I know everything's shifting to the Internet and some people would say, 'News is news, what you're talking about is a change of consumption, not the product that's out there.' But I think there is a change.

I think there's a general misconception that anything written quickly lacks quality, and I don't believe that.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.

I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.

I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters.

Now I'm writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing.

That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.

The characters I write about are very internal.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.

We're all seeking order. We're all seeking control.

Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.

Momentum was momentum, whether you found it in music or on the street or in the beat of your own heart.

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people.

Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.

You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.

This acting was very hard work.

Success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by a dint of hard work.

You can browse to your heart's content but it's hard work and not easy on the feet unless you do it through catalogs or the Internet, and I like to touch and try on the things I buy.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

The only method by which people can be supported is out of the effort of those who are earning their own way. We must not create a deterrent to hard work.

The nature of the task needs to be renewed so people just don't feel that all the hard work is in the same groove all the time, under the same circumstances and in the same environment.

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded.

I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life's problems.

I do enjoy making videos, even though they are long days and very hard work.

I love what I'm doing most of the time, but it's hard work. People only see your albums in the charts. They see us at award shows and after-show parties. They don't know about your doubts, the hard work that goes in.

I think that with a lot of hard work and dedication, I feel that I could be the best in the world. I'm still only 35 years old... I have a fresh start physically and mentally, and I feel that I can achieve my goal to be the best again.

My brother Larry. He taught me how hard work and dedication to the game was the only way to make it. He's taken care of all my business activities for me and my family for many years, and I thank him for that.

Getting in shape for this role, which is incredibly demanding, vocally, has been a lot of hard work, but I'm nailing it. I'm even kind of, at times, blowing my own mind, because I am even able to talk right now.

After two years of hard work and debate, Congress has passed a highway bill that will help fuel our economy by creating roughly 500,000 new jobs, as well as address many critical transportation needs in Ohio and the 18th Congressional District.