Michael Connelly Quotations

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

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.

Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Deep in my heart it still feels like I'm a journalist even though I haven't worked for a paper and carried a press pass for 14 years.

I don't think anyone will believe me, but I've never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book.

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

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

The characters I write about are very internal.

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

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 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.

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.

When you surf, the ultimate goal is to get into a pipeline where the water circles around you and that's all there is. In writing, it's the same thing. You want to get into this pipeline where the story is circling around you and that's all there is. That is writing nirvana to me.

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 wrote a book about a child killer once and part of the narrative is from his point of view. There was/is nothing wrong with that book. In fact, it's one of my most popular. But now that I am a father, I would not do that again.

Our goal with this legislation, as well as our mission as faith-based, non-profit hospitals, is to help the most vulnerable in society, in this case, those without health insurance.

I think Harry and jazz go together for a lot of reasons. For the most part, he listens to artists who had to struggle to make their music, whether because of their personal demons and ills or those of society. They had to fight to make their music, and that is the bridge to Harry. In his own way, he has to fight to make his music.

We are greatly encouraged by the success and national attention Massachusetts has earned when it decided that health insurance is something no one should go without. We want to build on that progress and keep this important dialogue going in order to make covering the uninsured a national priority.

What I do now is I write fiction. I ground my fiction in the reality of a place called Los Angeles.

When I started reading novels that really charged me or did something to me, that's when I started thinking that maybe I would like to build stories instead of houses.

The bottom line is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And I have to believe from past experience and knowledge that some of the links in Homeland Security are weak. Part of the story in "Lost Light" is about a weak link in the chain.

David Morrell is a master of suspense. He wields it like a stiletto - knows just where to stick it and how to turn it. If you're reading Morrell, you're sitting on the edge of your seat.

It's a measure of how complicated the world has gotten since 9-11, when thousands were wiped out. Just because statistics tell us that violent crime is actually down, that doesn't mean that people aren't scared.

I knew as I was writing "City of Bones" that this had to be the end of him as a cop and possibly even a character. But the bottom-line feeling when I was finished with that novel was that there was more I could do with Harry, things that would keep me plugged in and interested.

I knew as I was writing ""City of Bones"" that this had to be the end of him as a cop and possibly even a character. But the bottom-line feeling when I was finished with that novel was that there was more I could do with Harry, things that would keep me plugged in and interested.

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

I may sound facetious but I really think these stories are all interrelated and therefore really only one series.

I don't profess to be an expert. I know what I like. I never saw Miles Davis, but wish I had. I'd like to see him, Coltrane and Art Pepper playing at the Hollywood Bowl.

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them.

When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books.

As a reporter, you develop an ear for dialogue because it's your job to capture it accurately.

I was enamored of detectives as a teenager. I liked what they did - piecing things together, thinking about situations. But to get there? Eight to ten years in a patrol car? I didn't have that in me. I didn't want to tell people what to do.

The character can never be static from book to book. People might think you just come up with a new plot and stick this guy in. Well, he has to be as new as the plot every time.

I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.

The writing ethic was influenced - when you have to write every day, there's no such thing as writer's block.

Maybe it has something to do with being a reporter for a long time that I don't look to newspapers and television and so forth for inspiration most of the time.

The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for.

I'm not 'Mr. No-By-The-Book.' I just want to make sure the character is by the book.

Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.

No Way Back is my kind of novel - a tough, taut thriller - Mofina knows the world he writes about.

Everybody counts or nobody counts

It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.

There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than any cause, though it's the cause that is usually most vilified.

It's only a wonderful world if you can make it that way. There are no street signs pointing to Paradise Road.

There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.

You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.

You know you're going to get burned from time to time. It's just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they're about to snap the ball again.

Don't go growing a conscience on me," I said. "I've been down that road. It doesn't lead you to anything good.

I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.

She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top....

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

There is no end of things in the heart. ...she understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart.

In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is equalized with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must live in the short run and matters are often unjust there. The compensating for us of the universe makes all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.

What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures?

As a bassist he could never really be a sideman. He was always the anchor. He drove the beat. even if it was behind Miles Davis'a horn.

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

There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.

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

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.

The best crime novels are not about how a detective works on a case; they are about how a case works on a detective.

I saw a sneak preview of Jack Reacher and give two thumbs up to Tom Cruise. He did a great job with the role.

Action and adventure on land and sea-you can't ask for more. But Robert Kurson raises the ante in Pirate Hunters with an array of mystery and a fleet of colorful characters spanning four centuries. This is a great summer read!

To write more from memory and to be more creative - I think - because I am still writing about Los Angeles but I can't walk out my door and immediately drive to places I am writing about. So I think it has been a very good change for me after 11 books to start writing this way.

Ingeniously plotted and executed, Print the Legend is an epic masterpiece from Craig McDonald. Beginning to end, I was riveted by this story of character, history and intrigue.

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 would change very little because I have been very, very fortunate. A lot of things fell into place for me simply by happenstance. When that happens you don't really want to change anything, even if you could. Editorially my regrets are few and for the most part minor. I look back on my first published book and think I held on to it too long, babied it too long.

Can't complain because nobody listens.

Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.

...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.

Well, did he do it?" She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.

The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice.

How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically -- any way you want to look at it -- everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.

You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.

I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.

Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

There is no client as scary as an innocent man.

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?