Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.

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.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

I love to work, so give me what you've got. I'll play a tree, if you want me to. If you want fruit on it, then pay me more money. Otherwise, I just love to work.

With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.

When discipline is sown, like a good seed, it yields a harvest of things that fulfill and satisfy us-things that make us happy and release peace and joy in our lives.

Think you two puny Druids can hold this keep for a single night?

I find it funny because people complain about Brooklyn becoming too hip, but would they prefer stock brokers or gunfights or something?

True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.

Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.

It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do - need to do - more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.