Top 178 Quotes & Sayings by Michael Connelly
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Michael Connelly.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Deep in my heart it still feels like I'm a journalist even though I haven't worked for a paper and carried a press pass for 14 years.
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.
I watched 'Kojak' religiously with my father. It was a great bonding time. He loved shows where the stakes were high. Life and death, justice prevailing, things like that. I think that helped set me on the path to what I do now.
The characters I write about are very internal.
We're all seeking order. We're all seeking control.
It's about being fair. It's about Black Lives Matter. Yes, they matter. Everybody counts or nobody counts, and I think if more cops had the philosophy of Harry Bosch, we'd have less of these situations happening.
I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.
When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books. I was not interested in reading 'The Glass Key' or 'The Maltese Falcon' - stuff that was 40 or 50 years old.
To get a connection to your characters, you have to put them in a situation that you can feel yourself.
In the real world, some defense lawyers never have an innocent client in their whole career.
I think there's a general misconception that anything written quickly lacks quality, and I don't believe that.
A good day to me is writing from 6 A.M. 'til noon with a break to take my daughter to school. After lunch, if I still feel the momentum, I'll hit it again.
As a former reporter, I wrote 'The Scarecrow' quickly - I didn't have to think about what the character would do the way I do with Harry Bosch.
All my writing is fun, and that makes it hard to slow down or walk away.
In the TV world, we are seeing a lot more power going to the writer. I sense it is a writer's medium.
I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love.
The books I've written the fastest were the best reviewed and sold the best.
You have to write about what scares you.
I hate people thinking their city is unique, but there is a certain aura about Los Angeles; it's not necessarily a beautiful thing, but it's part of Harry Bosch.
In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.
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.
When I write about Mickey Haller as the Lincoln lawyer, I totally see Matthew McConaughey because he took that character when that character was still fairly new to me - only two or three years old - when I knew McConaughey was going to play him. He's also the same age, the right age, in comparison to the book.
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.
Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.
I trust the readers to build their own visual images. To me, that's part of the wonder of reading.
With age comes a greater understanding and a greater worldview.
I think there'd be huge losses if there weren't newspapers. I know everything's shifting to the Internet and some people would say, 'News is news, what you're talking about is a change of consumption, not the product that's out there.' But I think there is a change.
I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 9/11 in my past two books.
What is overriding that and most important is that readers generally are interested in a good character. They might be more comfortable with Harry because they think they know him, but they always seem willing to give somebody new a chance.
People like the Bosch books because they like Harry Bosch, not because the plots are fantastic.
I never miss L.A. because I'm there enough.
I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.
My experience as a newspaper reporter was invaluable in terms of getting me to the kind of writing I do now. It gave me a work ethic of writing every day and pushing through difficult creative times. I mean, there's no writer's block allowed in a newsroom.
That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.
I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.
I want to tell stories that reflect how people are feeling.
I don't think anyone will believe me, but I've never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book.
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.
My favorite is 'The Last Coyote.' I'm not saying that's the best book I've written; I hope I haven't written my best book yet, but that one was the first book I wrote as a full-time author, with my full-time focus. I have a nostalgic feeling about it.
One of the great things about fiction is you can use an issue and describe it in human terms.
I think the best way to sell a made-up character is to plant his feet into the real earth.
When I am so intensely involved with writing my books, I don't like to reread them. I feel like that story is done.
My literary heroes all wrote about L.A.: Joseph Wambaugh, Ross Macdonald, and Raymond Chandler were the three writers that made me want to be a writer.
I don't miss being a reporter as a job, but I do miss the everyday interaction with the front line of law enforcement. I still have a cadre of cops who keep me up to date, but I don't have the access I used to.
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.
We want our government to protect us, to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again. We quickly moved to give law enforcement more power to do this. But that now begs the question, did we move to fast? Did we give too much power away? I don't have the answer.
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.
That's what I like most about writing fiction over journalism: the easy metaphors!
I get up to write while it's still dark, 5 or 5:30. I start by editing and rewriting everything I did the day before, and that gives some momentum for the day.
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.
The LAPD, like most police departments, is a male-dominated bureaucracy. A woman faces a lot of pushback.
Many writers learned their craft and work ethic at a newspaper. I benefited from that.
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.
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.
I never write thinking, 'What would a woman do?' any more than I think, 'What would a man do?' It comes down to what would a solid detective do in these circumstances.
I think there has to be an empathic strike between the reader and the protagonist. There has to be something said or known that connects the reader to this person you're going to ride through the story with.
The fulfillment I get from a good day of writing is addictive and will always bring me back the next day.
I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.
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.
I used to tape over the top corner of my computer screen so I couldn't see what time it was. I like the idea that I'm just with the words and not knowing what's going on with the world, when it's lunch or dinner.
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