I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

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.

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake.

We are the royal children of God, and He is always busy doing what He knows is best for us. But we must ensure that our frequent thoughts and beliefs aren't going against our true destiny.

When you're talking about fighting, as it is, with no rules, well then, baby you'd better train every part of your body!

People love to see you get ahead — so long as you don't get farther ahead than they are.

Service is the highest form of prayer as far as I am concerned.

Who knows if John McCain could have won that presidential campaign [2008] in any circumstances when George W. Bush the outgoing Republican president had a 22 percent approval rating.

Twixt kings and tyrants there's this difference known; Kings seek their subjects' good: tyrants their own.

One of the amazing things about pop is that it's there to make people feel confident and empowered.

Time is an illusion that makes us all pant.