Quotes from Lisa Gardner

When I got my very first phone call that I'd hit the 'New York Times' list, I had a small rush of 'I've made it!' But the next morning, it occurred to me I didn't know what it was, so I called my agent and asked what being a 'New York Times' bestselling author really meant. He informed me that I was now a thousand pound gorilla.

The only time you're calm, you're centered, you're at peace, is when someone's trying to kill you. And that's just plain twisted.

Men should spend less time with guns and more time in childbirth.

I don't know much about international policing and I would love to learn more. Especially in this day and age when the Internet is rapidly reducing borders and crime can happen on a larger scale than ever before. These things intrigue me.

Everyone should say what they wanted. It saved time.

I have a huge author crush on Stephen King. Have never met him. Would probably embarrass myself. But it would be worth it.

I'm very intrigued by e-books, the topic du jour in the industry today. As a number one bestselling Kindle author, I love the way e-books make an author's backlist accessible to new readers. Of course, price point remains a source of concern. Personally, I don't have any of the answers, but I'm intrigued by the questions.

I'm unique for a suspense author in that I don't have a specialty background. A lot of suspense writers used to be lawyers or crime beat reporters. I didn't even know a cop when I started out. I finally figured out that I could visit prisons - I just had to be willing to make the phone calls.

When you're on book tours, you definitely need chocolate. At all times.

We're all in this together - when one writer succeeds, all writers succeed. I love discovering new authors. I think we need to take care of each other and talk about craft and nurture talent.

Who do you love? It's a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one's days. Simple, elegant encompassing. Who do you love?

It's kind of the yin and yang that fascinate me. That for all the evil men do, there are also people who work obnoxiously long hours and sacrifice their personal lives because it is a calling - if they don't keep our streets safe, if they aren't there to advocate for and save beaten women and children and murder victims, who will?

Mental illness is a disease and organic mental illness of young kids is becoming more and more of a disease... we do need to talk about it.

Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laugh.

It is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.

I loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight.

When it comes to locations, I'm one of those crazy authors who has to see it, touch it, taste it, before I trust myself to recreate it for my readers. Having said that, visiting a locked-down pediatric psych ward was the most intimidating research I've ever done - and I've visited maximum security prisons, shooting galleries, bone collections, etc.

Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.

When I got my very first phone call that I'd hit the 'New York Times' list, I had a small rush of 'I've made it!' But the next morning, it occurred to me I didn't know what it was, so I called my agent and asked what being a 'New York Times' bestselling author really meant. He informed me that I was now a thousand pound gorilla.

You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair. You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough.

Once, I was my mother's daughter. Now I am my daughter's mother.

Who do you love? It's a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one's days. Simple, elegant encompassing. Who do you love?

You can be the hunter, or you can be the hunted.

It wasn't that strangers couldn't hurt you. It was simply that the people you loved could do it so much better.