“College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.”

“Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon.”

“It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.”