Catering is extremely demanding financially and physically. It’s a business.

The main thing I look for in a recipe is taste, which is different from caterers and restaurants, who first ask ‘How does it look?’

I’m always astonished to see how badly people can behave when they think no one is noticing.

Writing is work and cooking is relaxing.

I told the caterer I’d work for nothing if he’d teach me about catering. I lasted one week full-time. It was exhausting.

The thing is, if you make best-sellerdom your goal, you’re going to be in trouble. It’s a very nice thing to have happen, but if one makes that a goal like, say, a literary writer...

I write in the morning – and then I’m always experimenting and tasting recipes for the books.

One thing that improved my cooking skills was being a poor student in California… If you don’t have much money, you have to learn to cook.

What one’s goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

When I make a recipe for the first time and it’s fabulous, I know I’m in trouble because I don’t know exactly what I did, and I can’t replicate it.

When I started to write culinary mysteries, I did it because nobody was doing it anymore.

After I outlined ‘Catering to Nobody,’ I went and worked for a caterer. And the other thing I had to do was to talk to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department about how they investigated a...

I like cream cheese in just about anything.

I wanted to be a literary writer, so I wrote story after story and sent them to ‘The New Yorker.’

In a mystery, the sleuth must be believably involved and emotionally invested in solving the crime.