Don Winslow

I would prefer things to be peaceful and not have conflict.

For a while, many years ago, my job was to get mugged. My job was to walk around Times Square trying to get a mugger to attack me so that someone else could come in and arrest the mugger.

By any objective standard, Joaquin Guzman Loera is an evil man who has caused untold suffering for others.

In the first place, it's surreal to watch filming, to see the little ideas you had in your head and now Taylor Kitsch is doing it, or Salma Hayek. And then to see it loud and bright onscreen is a trip.

Don't kid yourself: The justice system is a business. It's about money.

I think we need to rethink our ideas about what policing is and should be. I think we need to rethink our ideas about the criminal justice system as a whole, including the hysterically named corrections system. I mean, what's being corrected? Look, none of it's working.

As a novelist, you have to realise that the novel and the film have to live separate lives. They're just different, like your kids, even if they look alike.

As a surfer, I think of places like a wave: you see one thing on the surface. But you always know there's something different going on underneath.

A writer who doesn't need the money gains power and is dangerous in a negotiation.

As someone who has researched and written about the Mexican cartels and the futile 'war on drugs' for coming on twenty years, I know how tough a subject it is. Mind-bending, soul-warping, heartbreaking, it challenges your intellect, your beliefs, your faith in humanity and God.

As a writer, when you fall in love with a place, you want to spend more time in it, either physically or mentally, and so you write about it.

My earliest influence was Shakespeare - I read Shakespeare incessantly as a kid.