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

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

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

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.

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.

Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.

I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.

Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart, that if believed Had blessed one's life with true believing.

There are many, many benefits to being known for whatever it is you do. To deny that would be sort of asinine and vulgar.

I can only play characters that I feel like are real people and in a complete way and in such a whole way that if I fake any aspect of it I will have failed them and literally they're slaughtered.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

By consciously deciding how you will live the rest of your life, you can create a life that is extraordinary.

ISIS goes after any group that deviates from its extreme ideology, dissident Muslims, for example, or the Yazidis who practice an ancient religion distinct from both Islam and Christianity.

I love driving in the city at night.