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

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.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

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

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.

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

There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write each other letters once a year.