A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

Very few of us are what we seem.

Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

Fear is incomplete knowledge.

Books are a habit-forming drug.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

I’m tired of the lies and the cheating, and the broken promises that were never meant to be kept.

For basic survival, as for evolution, we have to accept the past as the creator of the present, influence the future, and act in the present.

I used to brag that I can hold up any eviction - even if the landlord had legal rights, I could hold it up for a year.

I am so used to having a comfortable life. What will it be like when I am no longer able to just buy anything I want?

You do not choose what your mission is; it will come to you when you are ready!

We need to make material progress, but we need inner development too ... remember that the real development we seek is not in the buildings but in our hearts and minds.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

You have a freedom in playing the villain. You can be a lot more out there, really. And there is a joy in that. There is a joy in kind of making a zone of psychoses.

God is simple, everything else is complex

Everyone is just nicer to prettier people.