Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.

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

I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun.

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

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.

I don't go to the movies because I don't like films.