I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

I just go to lunch. And I never know when something is going into the file and something is not.

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?

All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will

And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.

I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun.

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

The past is not complete until you are finished with it.

The worth of a gift lies as much in the way it is offered as in its intrinsic value.

Idealism is the death of the body and the imagination. All but freedom, utter freedom, is death

I think it's fair to have a vote on a resolution for censure.

Yes, it does make the load rather heavy if you carry tools for every eventuality.

I don't even know Amanda Seyfried or whatever - they're all the same!

I've done a number of projects where people go, 'This is your breakthrough role,' so I've stopped thinking that.

We must become holy, not because we want to feel holy, but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us.

It's just fantastic to feel the speed and the braking. It was a hard work - to hold an f1 car on the circuit is a job in itself. To drive quickly is another thing. I enjoyed it.

For I never have seen, and never shall see, that the cessation of the evidence of existence is necessarily evidence of the cessation of existence.