Jeffery Deaver

“I've always written, all my life, and when I was very young I developed an interest in poetry.”

“I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block.”

“To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.”

“I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.”

“My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.”

“She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.”

“You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.”

“If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.”

“In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.”

“Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.”

“The easy answer is that writing novels is a lot more fun than practicing law.”

“Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.”

“Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.”

“When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level.”

“I write pretty much anywhere - on planes, in hotel rooms, anywhere in my house.”

“Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.”

“She was reflecting back on a truth she had learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted.”

“Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them.”

“You put a certain amount of effort into stitching a jacket or dress and you get the garment you expect. There's no mystery. But you put a thousand times more effort into raising your child and the result is the opposite of what you hope and dream for. This seemed so unfair.”