I have a problem with my ears. I really have a problem. When I was living in the city, I threatened people because of some noise they were making that was bothering me. It sounds psychotic, I know. Once it was a beep from a fax that I heard in the night, very far away. I went to every floor, to every neighbor, putting my ear to the door, until I discovered where the sound was coming from. Then I would tell them, “You have a fax machine that’s making this sound and it’s driving me crazy.” “You’re four floors away from me—how can you hear that?” they said. “You’re crazy, you’re a hysterical woman.” Whatever, call me whatever you want, but I hear it, and I can’t sleep because of it.

one of my diseases, one of my things in life, is that anything that is secret I try to undo. And so the locks to those filing cabinets represented a challenge to me. How the hell to open them? So I worked and worked on them. There are all kinds of stories about how you can feel the numbers and listen to things and so on. That's true; I understand it very well - for old- 19 fashioned safes. But these had a new design so that nothing would be pushing against the wheels while you were trying them, and none of the old methods would work. I read books by locksmiths, which always say in the beginning how they opened the locks when the safe is under water and the woman in it is drowning or some-thing, and the great locksmith opened the safe. And then in the back they tell you how they do it, and they don't tell you anything sensible. It doesn't sound like they could really open safes that way — like guess the combination on the basis of the psychology of the person who owns it! So I always figured they were keeping the method a secret, and like a kind of disease, I kept working on these things until I found out a few things. First, I found out how big a range you need to open the combination, how close you have to be. And then I invented a system by which you could try all the necessary combinations - 8,000, as it turned out, because the woman DROWNING عزه Books are always telling how the great locksmith opens the safe under water when the woman in it is drowning. 20 you could be within two of every number. And then I worked out a scheme by which I could try numbers without altering a number that I had already set, by correctly moving the wheels, so that I could try all the combinations in eight hours. And then finally I discovered (this took me about two years of researching) that it's easy to take the last two numbers of the combination off the safe if the safe is open. If the drawer was pulled out, you could turn the number and see the bolt go up and play around and find out what number it comes back at, and stuff like that. With a little trickery, you can get the combination off. So I used to practice it like a cardsharp practices cards, you know - all the time. Quicker and quicker and more and more unobtrusively I would come in and talk to some guy. I'd sort of lean against his filing cabinet, and you wouldn't even notice I'm doing any-thing. I'm not doing anything— just playing with the dial, that's all, just playing with the dial. But all the time I was taking the two numbers off! And then I would go back to my office and write the two numbers down, the last two numbers of the three. Now, if you have the last two numbers, it takes just a minute to try for the first number; there's only 20 possibilities, and it's open. OK? It takes about three minutes to open a safe if you know the last two numbers. So I got an excellent reputation for safe-cracking.

I immediately loved working with flies. They fascinated me, and followed me around in my dreams.

I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, “Well, that’s a ritual.” And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular … For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.

Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.

Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don’t go near the online bookies – unless it’s research. […] Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet.