Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.

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.

I no longer feel the need to see and sense more than I've already experienced. I just want so desperately to hang on what I have.

something genuine like a mark in a toilet, graced with guts and gutted with grace

There is something to be said about the vastness of the earth, as well as the vastness of the heavens, in reminding us how small we are and how great God's creation is.

Old age is an island surrounded by death.

You can make fun of your own a lot easier than someone else's.

How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.

Individuals achieve optimal stupidity when they're given substantial powers while being insulated from the results of their actions.

Ju jitsu is very Buddhist. All that we fear we hold close to ourselves to survive. So if you're drowning and you see a corpse floating by, hang on to it because it will rescue you.

Golf is like life in a lot of ways - All the biggest wounds are self-inflicted.

Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark.