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You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

Michael Connelly

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Michael Connelly
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: July 21
Actor
Author
Chronicler
Crime Writer
Film Producer
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Television Producer
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Michael Joseph Connelly
Writing
Shut
Twenty
Twenties
Wrote
Novel
Three
Firsts
First

More quotes by Michael Connelly

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The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for.
Michael Connelly
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I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.
Michael Connelly
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I'm not 'Mr. No-By-The-Book.' I just want to make sure the character is by the book.
Michael Connelly
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As a bassist he could never really be a sideman. He was always the anchor. He drove the beat. even if it was behind Miles Davis'a horn.
Michael Connelly
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The writing ethic was influenced - when you have to write every day, there's no such thing as writer's block.
Michael Connelly
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I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.
Michael Connelly
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I'm a pretty harsh critic when it comes to my own stuff or things that come from my work.
Michael Connelly
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How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.
Michael Connelly
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I realize now I could have gotten a whole book out of that and so I think that was a big mistake. But the truth is you write in the moment and with your head down and there is no way back then that I could have conceived of Harry having the longevity that he has had.
Michael Connelly
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If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?
Michael Connelly
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As a reporter, you develop an ear for dialogue because it's your job to capture it accurately.
Michael Connelly
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Everybody counts or nobody counts
Michael Connelly
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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.
Michael Connelly
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The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.
Michael Connelly
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A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.
Michael Connelly
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A newspaper is the center of a community, it's one of the tent poles of the community, and that's not going to be replaced by Web sites and blogs.
Michael Connelly
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Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.
Michael Connelly
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...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.
Michael Connelly
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When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books.
Michael Connelly
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Action and adventure on land and sea-you can't ask for more. But Robert Kurson raises the ante in Pirate Hunters with an array of mystery and a fleet of colorful characters spanning four centuries. This is a great summer read!
Michael Connelly