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All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law.

I grew up when 'Schoolhouse Rock' taught millions of American kids how a bill becomes a law.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

Lawyers didn't seriously get involved in the Watergate stories until quite late, when we realized we were on to something.

I think fondly of the rabbit holes I disappeared down when I researched papers for history and English because I couldn't find quite what I was looking for, or because I had to go through so much material to find examples for my thesis.

There's something quite fascinating with crooks and criminals and all things against the law.