There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

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.

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.

Doubt makes faith true

Lady Luck generally woos those who earnestly enthusiastically unremittingly woo her.

I've been a Democrat, I've been a Republican, and I eventually became an independent because I don't believe either party has a monopoly on good ideas or strong leadership.

But it is not conscious strategy to go for unconventional roles.

I'm tired now of the elections.

If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you? It'll still be happening to an unchanged person.

I used to have two double espressos a day. I gave that up, had headaches for five days but now I'm feeling great.

No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to save them.

Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.

So we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.