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

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

I find the idea of vigilante justice very attractive. I like the idea that the murderer decides that this person has gone too far, and nothing will happen to him unless she does something to stop him.

Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.

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.

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