The figure of my father looms large in my imagination.

I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.

You encountered a misery near the end of the day and it took a while to gauge its full extent. Some miseries had sharp curvature and could be negotiated readily. Others had almost no curvature and you knew you'd be spending hours turning the corner. Great whopping-big planet-sized miseries.

And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book.

Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay...cats were all about using people

It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.