I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.

I'm not sure Kinsey has changed in these first twelve books. I think the reader learns more about her, but from Kinsey's perspective, only three years have passed while the rest of us have been getting older at a much faster clip.

I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.

Kinsey was never a lawyer. She's strictly blue collar.

I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I've learned to trust my own instincts and I've also learned to take risks.

I've never written about my husband, Steve, or any of my children because I know them all too well. I see them in all their complexities which makes them impossible to render on the printed page.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

The truth is, I could no more dictate her nature than she could dictate mine. Kinsey's happy as she is and she doesn't need to be rescued, improved, or saved.

The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She's taken on a life of her own, of course.

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day... and rightly so.

I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.

At that point, I sat down and made an alphabetical list of all the crime related words I could think of. So here I am now, nearly half-way through, probably tied up until the year 2015 or SO.

Henry is entirely invented though by now I feel he's as real as anyone I know.

I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year, transferred to what was then Western Kentucky State Teachers College for my sophomore and junior years, and then graduated from the University of Louisville in the summer of 1961.

My primary lesson, however, was that I'm a solo writer, happiest when I'm making all the executive decisions. I've always been willing to rise or fall on my own merits.

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.

If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them.

I love being single. It's almost like being rich.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

When all else fails cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of lifes ills.

Everything happens for a reason but that doesnt mean theres a point.

Ideas are easy. Its the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Ive never known anyone yet who doesnt suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around... Were all eight years old again and anything is possible.

If high heels were so wonderful men would be wearing them.

In my opinion, there's no condition in life that can't be ameliorated by a dose of junk food.

You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.

Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.

Poise and indifference so often look the same.

It is a truth of human nature that we can ponder life's mysteries for only so long before we lose interest and move on to something else.

Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there.

I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

The avantgarde are people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

After the first miscarriage, I tried to take the attitude that it was my body's way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be.

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

My first figure was a SLAYER eagle. And the dragons and the tribals are all I have got.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.