Fear and I were old buddies, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

As soon as I started writing Julia, by which I mean while writing its first sentence, I felt a sudden, reassuring charge of excitement. I knew it was going to work.

I generally wade in blind and trust to fate and instinct to see me through.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

The actual Blue Rose murders, which lie at the core of the three novels, yield various incorrect solutions which assume the status of truth.

Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question.

I had a connoisseur's... appreciation of fear.

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.

If I planned everything out in advance, I'd expire of boredom.

When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before.

I believe I encountered death, which was a bit too much for a seven-year-old.

Everyone wants to get better as they go along, but sometimes it's all you can do to stay consistent.

Each new book is a tremendous challenge.

There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite.

However, I think I managed to reach a new level with Koko, and I will always be grateful for the experience.

On gym days, I don't get to my desk until 4 in the afternoon, and everything except bedtime and the appointment with the liquid narcotic is pushed back a bit.

Fear and I were old buddies, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

Dick Dart emerged from the ether during a flight from New York with my wife and children to Puerto Rico.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity.

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm.

My first real breakthrough collided with the last months of Callaghan's Labour government, which had every intention of enjoying my success as much as I did.

Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

Democracy is stronger than terrorism, and we will not cower to the terrorists' campaign of fear.

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.

Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.

Who sows fear, reaps weapons.

For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.

Knight without fear and without reproach.

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the love of peace.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

My greatest fear is to be misunderstood.

I'll think, If this is his first punch, how are the others gonna feel? That's the only fear I have for myself.

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

That was my fear, which is why when I was took over a book, I was always trying to tweak it a little bit so that it looked like I was trying to add something instead of keeping the status quo.

You know that day after day of, Oh God what am I going to do with myself feeling? The fear of the emptiness that it implies keeps me going.

Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me.

Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.

We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.