She didn’t want to die. She couldn’t imagine wanting to die…Death was for—for other people.

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.

When you settle for anything short of the best life God wants to offer you, then you have been tempted to remain safe and the accountability for not changing your life becomes your prison of regret.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.

Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper.

To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

I've learnt that if I tell myself I'm not allowed something, I binge on it later. So if I want chocolate, I have chocolate. If I want biscuits, I have biscuits. I love cake. I just love cake.

The first principle of self-love is that you are not for sale.

Poverty is a career for lot's of well paid people

I don't try to change myself to impress anybody. I'm just who I am.