It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make.

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.

Rome was not built in a day.

The improvement of the mind improves the heart and corrects the understanding.

Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.

So, yes, I believe in angels, absolutely, I do.

We should live in such a way that our lives wouldn't make much sense if the gospel were not true.

It is because we underrate thought, because we do not see what a great element it is in religious life, that there is so little of practical and consistent religion among us.

No frozen-hearted woman ever I laid eyes on but has made duty her religion.

I can do anything - but that doesn't mean I should do that. I need to enjoy what I do. I enjoy making movies.

Italians have no sense of the dramatic.

You don't have to fight against being placed in a box any more than the number two has to fight against being the number three. I mean, two is not going to be the number three, ever.