The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.

If it meant brighter stars, she would follow God into the darkness.

We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve.

Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world. Art can create an analogy.

When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.

Karma is not a receipt of a physical experience, because of what someone has done.

What's the ROI of your Mom?

Those works whose ideal has not as much living reality and, as it were, personality as the beloved one or a friend had better remain unwritten. They would at least never become works of art.

I hate changes of administrations, because I have all my villains in place and they are all taken away and replaced with faceless wonders nobody knows.

I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time-you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.