Author

I am, after all, a thriller writer. I routinely delve into the darkest chambers of the human heart. I've written about murder, kidnapping, depravity, horror, violence, and disfigurement.

I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, I love to fool you a third time. And just when you think it's all over, I have what I call that Carrie hand-out-of-the-grave moment. Just when you think it's all over, I'm going to hit you with just one more. I can't help myself.

I'm not a fan of self-help books - how can something be 'self-help' if the book itself is purportedly helping you?

I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

A writer without a reader doesn't exist.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling - that you'd take on vacation and rather than going out, you'd read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that's what readers are responding to.

If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills.

I once worked as a tour guide in the Costa del Sol of Spain.

What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister; I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.

If I'm not writing well, I'm not happy. If I'm not spending enough time with my family, I'm not happy. If I'm not connecting to friends or if I don't work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme.

Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.

This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.

I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.

I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company.

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.

You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'