To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.

She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

The CIA's research program is described in a book called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate."

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you.

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

...personal torture instructor...I mean physical therapist.

The zenith of elegance in any woman's wardrobe is the little black dress, the power of which suggests dash and refinement.

Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.

If you think well, you cook well.

Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food.

Our sense of worth, of well-being, even our sanity depends upon our remembering. But, alas, our sense of worth, our well-being, our sanity also depend upon our forgetting.

My father was a diplomatic officer. As a diplomat's daughter, you have to learn to present yourself very early on.

As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully.

I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.

As a piece of rope, when burnt, retains its form, but cannot serve to bind, so is the ego which is burnt by the fire of supreme Knowledge.