But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.

The night is a strawberry.

A good journalist, as you know, is a great listener. And so's a good writer. And I got to listen to people for almost 20 years. That serves me well, I hope, when I try to understand how a character might be feeling, or how they might react.

I turned down all the requests for the rights to the books, for years, mostly because they wanted the rights to the characters, and to turn it into a TV series. This would have allowed them to do anything they wanted with the characters, and that just wasn't an option for me.

Few things are better in the world than a room full of librarians. I consider them literary heroes. The keepers and defenders of the written word.

Foolish people are never harmless. Stupidity accounts for as many crimes as anger and greed.

What did falling in love do for you? Can you ever really explain it? It filled empty spaces I never knew were empty. It cured a loneliness I never knew I had. It gave me joy. And freedom. I think that was the most amazing part. I suddenly felt both embraced and freed at the same time.