I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

I like a little danger. Tame danger, controlled by me. It gives me a sense of power, I guess, to take my life in my hands and know damn well I’m not going to lose it.

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

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.

I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it our ourselves.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

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.