Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things.

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.

We become what we deeply desire and think about most of the time

If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

I mean, the shoe - there is a music to it, there is attitude, there is sound, it's a movement.

I can't imagine anything that would signal more clearly that life goes on and joy can follow tragedy than your having a much wanted child.

I mean, really, whatever you woke up worrying about this morning, get over it. How important in the greater scheme of things can it possibly be? Make your peace and move on.

I'm like a one-woman protest machine.

Science is a cemetary of dead ideas.

Great conquests trouble, where contempt may please -- the one yields glory, and the other ease.