People talk about “dysfunctional” families; I’ve never seen any other kind

I read newspapers, textbooks on crime. I talk to private investigators, police officers, jail administrators, doctors, lawyers, career criminals.

Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they’re right – a chilling thought when...

Through Kinsey, I get to test my ingenuity and my skills with imaginary firearms… all without leaving the safety of my office chair.

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

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

I did an about-face and veered into the sandwich shop. What I ordered is none of your business, but it was really good.

Personally I don’t endorse the notion of mortality. It’s fine for other folk, but I disapprove of the concept for me and my loved ones. Seems unfair that we’re not allowed to vote on the...

S Is for Silence

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

Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.

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

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

Personally, I’d rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I’ve met so far. I don’t experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don’t talk about that much. It seems to...

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...

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...

Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.””I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said, faintly.”Some people can’t see the color red. That doesn’t...

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

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

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...

So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted...

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

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They’re just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.

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

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

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

You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to...

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.

I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought...

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...

It’s disconcerting to realize how little you have to say to someone who once occupied such a prominent place in your bed.

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 love being single. It’s almost like being rich.

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.

While I’m not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me to no end. (Kinsey Millhone)

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.

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 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.

Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.

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.