Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood-for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man.... It is only if the murdere…

People don't like reality, they don't like common sense, until age forces it on them.

Thrillers are like life-more like life than you are ... it's what we've all made of the world.

This is unfortunately a world in which things find it difficult, frequently impossible, to live up to their names.

A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colors, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious…

Parents - especially step-parents - are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fufill the promise of their early years.