I love music. But I've never owned a TV in my adult life, and I've never lived in a place with a television.

I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.

I just go to lunch. And I never know when something is going into the file and something is not.

The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort.

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

My father read 'The New York Times,' my mother did secretarial work, we had a dog, we had a garden, I had a brother.

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.