More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.

What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.