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

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.

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.

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.(Jesus, in Mark 11:24)

Trust in God gives self-power.

I've been very lucky in my life to have some great teachers.

I'm bad at baking. I'm bad at letting go of things. I'm probably bad at reading.

Photography cannot change the world, but it can show the world, especially when it changes.

Six months go by very quickly when you're a genius.

Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything.

The novelists of the nineteeth century had all the luck. They had a huge and easily pleased public and the world they surveyed had every appearance of permanence.

Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.