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 g….

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters..

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

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most liberal and illumined of the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court..

I don't go to the movies because I don't like films..

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

favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people..

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

The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort..

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and l….

We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them. ... Long aft….

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

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escala….

My father read 'The New York Times,' my mother did secretarial work, we had a dog, we had a garden, I had a brother..

A story begins and it always passes from the subjunctive to the declarative. And Italians don't seem to care about making a fine distinction between ….

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military..

I love music. But I've never owned a TV in my adult life, and I've never lived in a place with a television..

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

I know you shouldn't spit in your own soup but I think most crime writing is like TV and doesn't make enormous demands on one's intellect..

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