Self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel about it as Europeans do.

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.

Grit is the persistence in following your own destiny

To Fulfill Destiny Is To Walk In The Ordained

But I knew what it said. That I could be imperfect, but only so much. Human, but only within limits. And honest, to her or to myself, never.

The worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle.

Task performed by an unintelligent person should not be rated high.

Retail should never ever tell the copyright owner how their stuff is sold.

Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.

I'm the best player in the NBA.