"I think in the corridors of power these dangerous kinds of orders are issued in a much more vague way, passed down two or three levels of command before they're given to the assassin."

"He would still see it as his duty to shut up and get on with it, not cause any trouble. In our own time we've made a hero of the rebel, and it's more heroic to speak up."

"By March '87 we're down to seven thousand, by the end of the year we're down to twelve hundred. The whole bottom just fell out of the market. It was bad for me because I was in Australia at the time."

"All that political stuff Delano was doing. Me, I've gone off the top, into total fantasy."

"It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics."

"The world would be a very sad place if readers could only love one story."

"When I started to write culinary mysteries, I did it because nobody was doing it anymore."

"The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation."