Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea - wink, wink.

You can't have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front - or a happy without a sad.

I've been married to Kris for 21 years, and there have always been rocky times. And it's nothing special.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.

I mean, I'm married to an academic oncologist, a cancer doctor, okay? He and his colleagues are some of the most conscientious, devoted, hard-working, conventional bourgeois people in the known universe. They are the people that keep this society going.

In the Palestinian camps in the Seventies, I fell in love with a woman fighter - now married with six kids, not mine! - and I seriously considered staying there with her.