Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

What do you look at while you’re making up your mind? Ours is not a reflective culture, we do no raise our eyes up to the hills. Most of the time we decide the critical things while looking at the linoleum floor of an institutional corridor, or whispering hurriedly in a waiting room with a television blatting nonsense.

Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.

When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.

And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.

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...