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

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

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.

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

I don't go to the movies because I don't like films.

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

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters.