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.

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 delicate sensitivity of a frightened rattlesnake.

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

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

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

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