I got thrown out of school several weeks in my senior year being caught in the girls' dorm. This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.

Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition.

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon

Coincidence exists, but believing in it never did me any good.

The key to growing up well, is being tough enough.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

She had a weird, fleeting thought that she wanted to eat her sister, like a sorceress in a storybook – gobble her down into her belly, keep her safe.

Every lie a person tells is an emotional dead end road that puts weight on the heart. Satisfaction is always in the truth.

Expediency may tip the scales when arguments are nicely balanced.

Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.

Any honest inquiry into the reality of nature also yields insights about ourselves.

The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.

I cannot think of a better definition of Christianity than that: give, give, give.

Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be ‘wrong’, which is what our education encourages us to believe.

Once you sleep on feathers you can't go back to sleeping on the floor.

Why are people saying it's too soon? Like the people on that flight, we need to agree about what to do about terrorism. And I think we need to have that conversation now.