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

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

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.

I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.

People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.

Energy-saving technologies keep improving faster than they're applied, so efficiency is an ever larger and cheaper resource.

What have you done?' he said, his voice hollow and strained. He stepped back and put his fists to his temples. 'What have you done!' With an effort, Eragon said, 'Made you understand.

Love is creative. It does not flow along the easy paths, spending itself in the attractive. It cuts new channels, goes where it is needed.

By the anxieties and worries of this life Satan tries to dull man's heart and make a dwelling for himself there.

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale.

I think all of us create our own miracles.

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

The devil lies brooding in the miser's chest.