What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.

Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.