It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire.

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.