It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to.

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.

I thank God for an amazing life.

Love from the heart shows itself in meekness and not in tumultuous drumbeats.

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.

If you don't believe one person can make a difference, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.

California officials want to contain a measles outbreak that originated in Disneyland last month. They are in luck because everyone who is exposed to it is still in line at Space Mountain.

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

Unity and simplicity are the two true sources of beauty.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

It's always hard - if you're not the best player on your team, how can you be the best player in college?

Environmental extremists ... wouldn't let you build a house unless it looked like a bird's nest.