Simenon on Criminals

'Professor Sydney Smith of Edinburgh said: "Criminals are ordinary people like you and me".'

'You believe that?'

'Down at the lake here, at Vevy, two old men, men in their seventies, had a quarrel in a café, about the weather, politics, nothing at all. And one hit the other in the head with a glass. Killed him. He looked at his friend in horror. "Jean," he said. "what have I done to you?" Is that a criminal?'

[John Mortimer interviews Georges Simenon; from In Character (1983), 19]