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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.