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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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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
Character
Book
Make
Sure

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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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Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.
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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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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Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.
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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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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Maybe it has something to do with being a reporter for a long time that I don't look to newspapers and television and so forth for inspiration most of the time.
Michael Connelly
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I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters.
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 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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That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.
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
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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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I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.
Michael Connelly
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Momentum was momentum, whether you found it in music or on the street or in the beat of your own heart.
Michael Connelly