Writer

It seems like women are always told, 'It is not your time.'

Prior to the Civil War, most libraries were either privately owned or housed in universities or churches.

I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.

My books are never about the crimes. They are about how the characters react to the crimes.

If you wear them outside, they stop being pyjamas. I wear mine to the mail box, which is right in front of my house - that's my limit. Anything else is wrong.

Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, 'I want to do that.'

Equal access to reading is fundamental to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Libraries are the backbone of our education system.

Reading is power. Reading is life.

When I became a published writer, I said, 'Whatever I can do to help the libraries I want to do,' so all of my book tours since then have involved me coming to a library and talking about how important libraries are for a community.

I think some people are good at being alone, and some people aren't, and as a child, I really liked it.

I started Save the Libraries in 2010 by hosting a big fundraiser in my city library of DeKalb County in Atlanta. Through that, I learned that even with fundraisers, libraries often don't make money - they just barely break even.

I always want to make sure the book I'm writing is the best book I can deliver.

It's hard because people often don't recognise shyness; they think it's just someone being rude. I have had to work to overcome that, especially if I'm meeting my readers at author events, because I don't want them to think I'm snooty or rude.

We make assumptions: nurses should be nice, teachers should be good. But everyone has a dark side, some darker than others.

I always say 'thriller;' if they see you're a woman - and you're a blond woman - people assume you're writing about cats and romances where somebody has died.

My father and his eight siblings grew up in the kind of poverty that Americans don't like to talk about unless a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina strikes, and then the conversation only lasts as long as the news cycle. His family squatted in shacks. The children scavenged for food.

Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven't gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.

Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.

Anyone who's been to high school with teenage girls knows how horrible girls can be.