I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.

But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.

Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.

… It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know.