The delicate sensitivity of a frightened rattlesnake.

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world of disasters.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

I used to think the world was divided into good people and bad people, that you could pin responsibility for evil on certain definite people and punish the guilty. I’m still going through the motions.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.