I hear a lot of, 'I'm a writer because of you.' It's not a bad feeling, but it sneaks up on you. You don't ask for it.
I learned to write crime novels by reading people I hoped to emulate: people like James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, Joseph Wambaugh, and Sue Grafton.
Being out in nature inspires me as a writer.
A whole album to one writer - now that would be really interesting.
Why did I become a writer? Because I grew up in New York City, and there were seven newspapers in New York City, and my family was an inveterate reader of newspapers and I loved holding a paper in my hand. It was something sacred.
The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.
I really looked up to Tina Fey as a writer, and because I did have a background in writing, she is someone whose career I really did admire.
Literature taught me that I wasn't alone, that I could become a writer if I worked at it, that my story mattered. Whether a young reader becomes a writer or not, they deserve to know that their story, whatever it may be, is important.
Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.
Jack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer... in the Arab sense that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.
I'm always so inspired by Jeff Eastin's writing.
I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction.
Ross McDonald had a greater influence on me than any other writer. His style of writing, the repeated theme of the past coming out to grab somebody, that's very attractive to me as a reader and, now, as a writer.
The two contemporary writers whom I consider as role models are Janet Malcolm and Michael Lewis.
I met Eva Ibbotson before I became a writer myself, and was in awe of her then.
The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.
People are going to bash you. You get rejected. It's hard. I don't really feel like that's my place as the teacher. I think the most important thing is to figure out what they're trying to do and turn them onto writers who are doing similar stuff. I think that's something I can do more than anything else: get them to be big readers.
Louise Gluck, C.K. Williams, Thomas Lux. A lot of the poets that I like are the ones that influenced me as a writer.
I was very influenced by films and books like 'Serpico,' 'The French Connection,' and 'Prince of the City.' They were some of the reasons I became a crime writer.
