Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

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.

A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.

Perfection is doing all that you could. And there's not a single thing more you can do.

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.

There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.

Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?

You have to eat before you train. Otherwise, that really intense training, after about 40 minutes you start to flag.

Before my secret meeting with the Pope I asked him to come wearing white if deep down he agreed with the Reformation. Pretty crazy.

Americans do not like long wars with indecisive outcomes.

How can you give a man a room in a house and not let him come through the front door?

Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede.