There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.

Long ago I'd said that I am "fascinated by the phantasmagoria of human personality" - this is perhaps even truer now than years ago.

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.

There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.