Quote

There's a tendency when you write a book to portray yourself as the hero.

I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature.

There are a lot of people who can be classified as heroes and do great things and inspire me.

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

The only reason anyone ever called me a hero is because I get this paper, here.

All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law.

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.