I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough you will be a healthy person. That is if you write what you need to write as opposed to what will make money or what will make fame.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love and then for a few close friends and then for money.

I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

My mom's a concert pianist so she started teaching me when I was around seven. When I was eight I started writing my own songs and kinda started putting piano and singing together. But I'm trained classically which is a big influence on me I think.

I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor so I come from a very academic background. I love writing you know?

I think I've become more like my mom just because of what we're both interested in children and teaching and writing.

I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but I wasn't that way growing up.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

You may not be able to read a doctor's handwriting and prescription but you'll notice his bills are neatly typewritten.

Writing and singing does give me some kind of release from the demons of my past it is a therapy of sorts but to be honest my marriage played a more important role in the acceptance of myself than performance has ever done.

I was a bartender for a long time so I know how to make drinks but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did and why I get to produce more writing than she did and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

Love is easy and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea someone says something and you're in love.

The real violence is committed in the writing of history the records of the legal system the reporting of news through the manipulation of social contracts and the control of information.

What I'm doing is writing stories about women who care about justice. They are women who think about the difference between right and wrong what's legal and illegal ethical and unethical moral and immoral.

Truly I never thought of myself as writing legal thrillers and I still don't think I do. I write stories about women.

I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.

The second half of the '60s really was a kind of learning period in terms of writing for me.