I've been stalked.

I've never taken a scalpel to a dead body.

If everybody, every day, would try to do one thing that pulls them beyond themselves the world will start being a better place.

If it's really beautiful weather, sometimes I might take a helicopter out. I got my license in 1999.

If you chomp down too hard on my work, you're going to break your teeth.

In my forties, my optimism was boundless. I had really good health and tremendous success which allowed me to do anything I wanted.

In the first person, the readers feel smart, like it's them solving the case.

Murder is about power and the more powerful women get the more it will change the good that they do and the bad that they do.

My fans want me to talk to them. And even if they want to be critical, I want to hear what they've got to say.

My friends call me Miss Worst Case Scenario.

Night fell clean and cold in Dublin, and wind moaned beyond my room as if a million pipes played the air.

Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.

That's why I think the 'Scarpetta' series has worked so well because people like spending time with this character.

The biggest risk with a series that goes on this long is that you'll get bored with the character.

The greatest gift is our own eyes, sense of smell, and abilities to deduce.

The human capacity to be curious has always existed.

With DNA, the ability to find out a lot more with a lot less has increased our ability for identification.

On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.

When I was in second grade, my mother moved from Miami to this evangelical conservative environment in western North Carolina, two miles down the road from Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.