So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

I do not take any pleasure whatsoever in being a famous person.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most liberal and illumined of the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters.

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?