God, in the orthodox view, causes famine, plague, and flood. Was God evil? Evil is a convenient fiction.

However, I think I managed to reach a new level with Koko, and I will always be grateful for the experience.

I had a connoisseur's... appreciation of fear.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm.

When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before.

It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.