Michael Connelly

“I'm relaxed, Belk. I call it Zen and the art of not giving a shit.”

“My entire career writing novels was wrapped up around Harry Bosch. This character was too important to me to just hand off.”

“Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.”

“Keeping your head down and just writing is only part of the equation, so I surround myself with smart people to help sell my books.”

“You know that song, 'New York, New York?' If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere? That's kind of like L.A.”

“I'm one hundred percent Irish, and I'm very proud that I'm Irish American, though I don't know exactly where my ancestors came from. I just know County Cork.”

“My father was a builder. During my high school years, I worked for him. One summer, I was working with a guy who had just come back from Vietnam and had been a tunnel rat. He wouldn't talk about the experience, but it sounded really scary to me.”

“The LAPD, like most police departments, is a male-dominated bureaucracy. A woman faces a lot of pushback.”

“My history is that I will create a character, and they will have a book to themselves, and then I'll integrate the character into the larger world of all my books.”

“I think there has to be an empathic strike between the reader and the protagonist. There has to be something said or known that connects the reader to this person you're going to ride through the story with.”

“I want to tell stories that reflect how people are feeling.”

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

“When I write about Mickey Haller as the Lincoln lawyer, I totally see Matthew McConaughey because he took that character when that character was still fairly new to me - only two or three years old - when I knew McConaughey was going to play him. He's also the same age, the right age, in comparison to the book.”

“I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.”

“I not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked.”

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

“People like the Bosch books because they like Harry Bosch, not because the plots are fantastic.”

“Many writers learned their craft and work ethic at a newspaper. I benefited from that.”

“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 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.”