Thomas Perry Quotes

Yes, in my books I do edit myself to keep from becoming the Village Explainer.

I don't have dry seasons, because I don't allow them.

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

I held a variety of jobs - most notably ten years working in universities - and kept on writing.

I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers.

It was a lot of fun, and writing a series is comfortable. It's almost like having a secure job.

I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.

I do hope to bring Jane Whitefield back before too long.

Being comfortable isn't the way to learn to expand your abilities.

The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.

You have very accurately described the difficulty of presenting my books on film: many of my characters are alone most of the time, and when they do talk, what they say is mostly lies. That can make for a pretty confusing film.

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it.

Much of what we do in life has a huge component of luck.

Once you have invented a character with three dimensions and a voice, you begin to realize that some of the things you'd like him to do to further your plot are things that such a person wouldn't, or couldn't, do.

Bombs were not just weapons. They were something more, expressions of the bomber's thoughts about you, his predictions of your behavior - what you would see, even what you would think and feel. He'd staged a presentation designed to fool you. He didn't even know your name, but you were the one he was really after. Bombs were acts of murder, but they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you, chances for you to pick wrong when it was almost impossible to pick right.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.

I do have to earn a living, so I'm conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I'm not enjoying a story, the reader won't either.

Holy shit! It wasn't them; it was him!

I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.