Ten thousand years of civilization shed in an instant when you put a woman behind the wheel of a car..

To be a classic, a novel should be original..

I can't exist without books..

The trouble with psychology is that it doesn't take human nature into account..

the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with….

The knives of jealousy are honed on details..

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading..

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs..

I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden..

Nobody really lives in the present..

I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it..

I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid..

It's living - a broad spectrum of living - that teaches you how to live, not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think..

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes..

we dislike those we've injured..

Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write..

We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real..

London underground took me on a tour of all the hidden places, the disused shafts and staircases... that was very interesting..

Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening..

there must be a routine to life, a framework to hang life on. Routines were what kept you sane, gave you something to do at this moment and at that, ….

I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel sorry for my psychopaths, because I do..