The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world of disasters.

There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write each other letters once a year.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him,, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married.

And then for a long time there is a silence that is so loud it threatens to blow my head off.

If you do good work, it tends to stick around. People still come up to me and say, 'The Ref' is my favorite Christmas movie.'

I do not 'get' ideas ideas get me.

The artist enriches the soul of humanity. The artist delights people with a thousand different shades of feeling.

I do a lot of research on what people have done in the past.

Can you imagine how terrible it is when you've got everything and you're still desperately lonely? That is awful beyond words.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby.

The way I feel about you, it's like I finally understand what Lionel Richie is singing about. I mean, what we have, it's like movie love.

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.