That was what murder was-as easy as that!But afterwards you went on remembering...

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.

Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do.

You were born to persistently change your negative conditions instead of being changed by them.

She listens to the delicate fluttering of sparrows' wings, tiny messengers. The sound reminds her of life - struggling, beating, rising, flying, and now dissolving into space.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.

All good men are anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are anarchists. Jesus was an anarchist.

Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

"Mercy is not in favor in my heavens today," says Vashanka, unforgiving and combative, folding vast arms and spearing Harmony with lightning that crackles from his gaze.

I think striking the right tone for your story is, if you like, the alchemical work of writing.

For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die.