Quotes from Michael Connelly

Artists are supposed to stay hungry.

The act of reading a story is sacred, and people build images and all that stuff.

I don't put a lot of description in the books because I write books the way I like to read them, and that is I like to build images and be a creative reader, and so I write that way.

My whole reputation and creative thought as a novelist is really wrapped around Harry Bosch, so he's near and dear.

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.

In the TV world, we are seeing a lot more power going to the writer. I sense it is a writer's medium.

I'd seen Titus Welliver in a few shows and felt he had some inner demons in his portrayals, as does Harry Bosch.

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.

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books, I don't like to reread them. I feel like that story is done.

The characters I write about are very internal.

There is a prevailing school of thought that something good must take time, sometimes years to create and hone. I have always felt that the books I have written fastest have been my best - because I caught an unstoppable momentum in the writing.

My favorite is 'The Last Coyote.' I'm not saying that's the best book I've written; I hope I haven't written my best book yet, but that one was the first book I wrote as a full-time author, with my full-time focus. I have a nostalgic feeling about it.

I connect to the tradition of Irish storytelling. And I think there is something - I can't put my finger on it - something genetic there. Maybe just a need to tell stories.

Now I'm writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing.

I can't say I'm an expert on public transport.

Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left.

You're a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wifes and an eight-year-old daughter and we all love you.

No matter how much they tried to dress her up with neon and family entertainment she [Las Vegas] was still a whore.

Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside. Earl Briggs sits on my jury, Gloria Dayton, too. They are there with Katie and Sandy, my mother, my father, and soon Legal Siegel as well. Those I have loved and those I have hurt. Those who bless me and those who haunt me. My gods of guilt. Every day I carry on and I carry them close. Every day I step into the well before them and I argue my case.

If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you.

He had lived alone most of his life. He was used to places that were empty. He knew the real shelter of a home was inside yourself.

The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation.

if you can't stand the ghosts, get out of the haunted house.