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

I have no memory for what happens in what books. I don't know when I might remember a scene, but beats me what book it's in because there are 14 of them now.

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

I find the idea of vigilante justice very attractive. I like the idea that the murderer decides that this person has gone too far, and nothing will happen to him unless she does something to stop him.

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.

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

My head can get to murder and rape for profit because I can understand greed as a human motive, but I cannot understand the voyeuristic desire to watch such a film. I can comprehend one and I cannot comprehend the other.

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

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 that which is speculation and that which is fact.

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

I admire Dickens beyond words. He is one of the greatest plotters of all times. Didn't have a clue about women, but he sure could plot.

I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship, and then the friendship, of two Venetians, Roberta and Franco, who remain my best friends here after almost 50 years.

I do not take any pleasure whatsoever in being a famous person.

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

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.

I listen to Handel's vocal music, almost exclusively.

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

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

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 escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.

I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.

I'm involved with a baroque opera company here in Italy. I write some of their booklet material, comments on operas. I also write for some baroque opera festivals because this music is my real passion.

Italians tend to be less rigidly moral and law-abiding than do Anglo-Saxons. They also have a profound suspicion of the state and most of its agencies.

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

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

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

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

The character I created, 'Commissario Brunetti,' who appears in all my books, shares similar reading, artistic and musical tastes with me. Subconsciously, I knew that if I was to spend however long it would take to write this book with him, this man would have to be someone I'd like to have dinner with.

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

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

One way to quantify the immigrant contribution to the overall economy is to measure their share of the U.S. economic output. One such examination for the years 2009-2011 found that immigrants contributed 14.7 percent of the total economic output.

I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist.

When I go on the road now, which is less than before, but still more than I'd like to, I think of myself primarily as a singer. Not a songwriter, not a celebrity, just a man who likes to sing.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

I'm obsessed with the countryside: woods, forests, fields, lakes, mountains. I'm really into folk music and folklore. But more so I'm into electronic music. I'm into bands that have both aspects, like Boards of Canada is a perfect example. You could listen to that type of music running through a woods. It's kind of what I wanted to achieve.

Manufacturing still has the greatest multiplier effect, in terms of job creation, of any sector of the economy.

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality... the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

The problem is that restaurants have assumed that kids don't want to eat anything other than chicken nuggets or fast-food burgers, but they do. They want to eat things that taste good.

I decided very early on that it took too much of my energy to pretend to be someone else. People will make up their minds about me whatever I do or say, but at least I know I am being true to myself.

I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.

I think Americans are weirdly puritanistic about psychopharmaceuticals. There are millions of people out there who would otherwise be dead or rocking by themselves in a corner who now lead full and normal lives because of amazing and wonderful scientific advances.

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.

'Really,' thought I, 'we call Baltimore the 'Monumental City' for its two marble columns, and here is Edinburg with one at every street-corner!'

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

I hate ugliness. You know I'm allergic to ugliness.

I have lived my life very openly, and have never hidden the fact that I am gay!

Any entrepreneur worth their salt knows that their brand is worthless if it doesn't somehow contribute to society or the overall good of the planet.

The years since the Nobel Prize have been productive ones for me.