I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.

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.

Always be organized in adding value

You could be a very trustworthy person. It doesn't matter! If they just met you, they decide to trust you or not in the 1st 3 - 4 seconds...

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

It took me too long to realise that if you go to a marriage counsellor to resolve problems, it's in his interest to keep the marriage going.

I watched Elvis Presley become - I listened to Elvis Presley. I watched Chuck Berry become. I listened to Little Richard. I heard that music, and it was part of my upbringing.

Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.

The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest.

I always tell my three daughters, it's not about the number on the scale, it's how you feel. You know you are going to feel better if you eat healthier.