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.

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 know you shouldn't spit in your own soup but I think most crime writing is like TV and doesn't make enormous demands on one's intellect.

A story begins and it always passes from the subjunctive to the declarative. And Italians don't seem to care about making a fine distinction between that which is speculation and that which is fact.

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

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

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