Love can be a very frightening thing.”“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.

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.

Nothing is expensive when you promise.

The poor want a few dollars more - the rich focus on making more.

Color can be measured in the depth of ones' skin, however character is measured by the content of ones' heart.

All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

If I lived in another country, like a country that was, say, an enemy of the United States, I would be more amused than I am.

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.

I'm kind of still down with Virg Woolf on this one: "women must kill the aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been 'killed' into art."

A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.

If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we'll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.

I am interested in things happening around me, and I need to understand what's going on in other artistic sectors like music and literature.