A horse perceives eye contact as provocative, as if it and its status in the herd are not being respected. If it cannot avoid eye contact, it will react in a different way, by rebelling for example. In dressage you don't get anywhere by not showing respect, however superior your species might be. Any animal trainer can tell you that. In the mountains in Argentina there's a wild horse which will jump off the nearest precipice if any human tries to ride it.

Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean.

Harry looked at Bellman. He could not help but admire him. The way you admire a cockroach you flush down the toilet and it comes creeping back again and again and in the end it inherits the world.

Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people - about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition.

Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the "real" women's body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible mold.

I've read that it's the smell some carnivores use to find their prey. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it.

I write something that I believe I've made up, and it's only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I've been writing about myself again.