Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?

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.

Nobody is masterless, even ronin enslaved by his sword.

The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice.

No one believed [the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens] was tough enough on illegal immigration, and it didn't give enough flexibility on future legal immigration.

I was regularly advised not to go into music, that I should give up that foolish dream.

There cannot be creation without a lot of energy.

I was pitching on all adrenaline and challenging them. I was throwing the ball right down the heart of the plate.

Win-win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It's not your way or my way; it's a better way, a higher way.

It's tough at the top. It's tough at the bottom. But in between you could use them for horse-shoes.

Writing ... it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.