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

favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people.

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

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 have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

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

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.