My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace. (New Year's Eve, 1947)

That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment

When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot.

The night was a time for bestial affinities, for drawing closer to oneself.

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

Everything human is alien to me.

Honestly, I don't understand why people get so worked up about a little murder!