I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

Reading Mission to Paris is like sipping a fine Chateau Margaux: Sublime!

It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.

To me, writing is a very physical process. I lay out the entire book with the two narratives side by side on my bedroom floor, and just get down on my hands and knees and start looking at it in that physical space. "Does this really follow from this? Should this be here or elsewhere?" I will literally cut the paper into paragraphs. I'll cut it into segments and move the segments around from one narrative to the other until I feel that I've found the natural structure.

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.