Quotes from JEFF ABBOTT

Criminals are dumb as stumps. If they were smart they could go be investment bankers. Or judges.

She spoke with the air of the artist, playing out each nuance until it wasn't a nuance anymore.

I'm sympathetic with new writers who focus so much on the beginning. That's what you show friends or beta readers to see if you are just wasting your time or if there's something there. But you won't really know until you finish the whole book.

I believe in writing somewhat quickly, getting the story down; it can be bad, it can be a mess, but the key thing is to get it down.

The perfection of her face created a sense of emptiness--like a house with no curtains in the window.

I'd spent five minutes looking at Twitter once and felt I'd wandered into a poker game where everyone immediately displayed their hands against the cool green of the felt.

She had to treat it like a tactical error, not a human tragedy, because she was not sure that his unfinished jigsaw of a brain understood sadness and loss.

Read heavily in the area where you want to write. Be aware of what's selling and what's doing well but don't try to write to market trends; they are fleeting.

Emma, okay, enough with the singing. Mommy's getting a three-pill headache.

I want to be a writer you can always depend on for a good read during your vacation, during your flight, during a time in your life when you want to forget the world around you. The nicest notes I've received from readers are those that tell me I've gotten them back into reading for entertainment. For me, there is no greater compliment.

Life is a series of abandonings.

Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.

The death for the driver was egregiously bad: being impaled is never anyone's exit of choice.

Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today--all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going--and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success.

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

The woman offered her hand, and I shook it. She had a confident grip. She didn't tell me her name, though, and I couldn't tell if she simply forgot or she didn't want me to know.

I don't need this, I was thinking. But I'm weak. I'll be the first to admit it. If a chick presses her face against mine, all soft perfume and whispers, what am I going to do? Say no?

I don't drink a lot but I like the air of a good bar--the ripe wisdom of animated conversation, the cutting smell of fine liquor, the sound of laughter among friends.

If it's broken, it can be fixed.

Abstract art filled the walls, lined the bookshelves. But all painted with the same crude hand, no eye to detail or form. Savagely mixed, the colors selected to hurt the eye. Jackson Pollock without the pictures. They were ugliness disguising themselves as talent.

I travel, a lot, to research the locales for the books. I have professional contacts that I can ask questions of, or show them scenes to vet. You meet a lot of interesting people this way, and as long as you've done your prep work so you're not wasting your time, the experts are usually really happy to help.

No, I don't know what it's like to be an amnesiac teenager. I do know what it's like to feel overwhelmed, or alone, or as if no one understands you or likes you. We've all been there. But the specifics of what a person feels at a certain point in their life is of course different. I just tried to use my imagination responsibly and respectfully.

I tend to be a plotter, just because I do have to write an outline of the book for my publisher, and I like to have an idea of where I'm headed. That said, I don't treat the outline as cast in stone, and I often get better ideas as I write, so the outline is a living thing. What often drives change is when I start writing a particular character and she or he asserts themselves more strongly than I thought they would.

And now I am about to live this truth, because my whole life is going to become a carefully constructed lie. Why? Because I write these words with my brothers' blood on my face. Oh, I washed the stains off weeks ago. No remnant of their loss remains on my skin for anyone to see. But their blood is there. Always, an invisible mark on me.