Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it.

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.

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.

I've always been a geek and slightly awkward... slightly umm... I was never the cool kid at school.

It's an unavoidable truth. Fear of life closes off more opportunities for us than fear of death ever does.

If a woman is sufficiently ambitious, determined and gifted, there is practically nothing she can't do.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

I love it when artists talk about process! I love the movie Comedian.

Anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything.

Pentagon records show that at least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. Army have deserted since the Iraq war began. Hey, at least somebody has an exit strategy.