I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many.

Writers don't write writing, they write reading. When I was a kid, I read four or five books a week. And that is how I became a writer.

To become a novelist, the most crucial thing one must do is read, read and read again - gradually you begin to think like a writer. Ideas are not found - they are shaped.

Avi Quotes