“I get my heroes so that they're lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they've got to be rich and then I make it that they're only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they're well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it's dangerous to be alone in the room with.”

“My passionate puritan!”

“The real aim of romance is to provide escape and entertainment.”

“There is nothing of which every man is so afraid, as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”

“I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things. And most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house all by themselves.”

“It's hard to go from thinking that a person is somebody you really want to know to finding out that not only do you not want to know them at all, but they're capable of violence.”

“My men are my references. They're waiting outside for the books. They're dangerous.""Men like that always are.”