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Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

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
Writer
Rather
Character
Would
Plots
Plot
Fancy

More quotes by Michael Connelly

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I feel I'm functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I'm trying to get the world accurate.
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It's only a wonderful world if you can make it that way. There are no street signs pointing to Paradise Road.
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I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.
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As a reporter, you develop an ear for dialogue because it's your job to capture it accurately.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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I think there's a general misconception that anything written quickly lacks quality, and I don't believe that.
Michael Connelly
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It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.
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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I was enamored of detectives as a teenager. I liked what they did - piecing things together, thinking about situations. But to get there? Eight to ten years in a patrol car? I didn't have that in me. I didn't want to tell people what to do.
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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I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.
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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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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Everybody counts or nobody counts
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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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