You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

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.

Life is a collection of experiences. Stockpile those wrought with love like the treasures they are.

Our minds have a great capacity for deception. This does not mean we are necessarily dishonest but if we are not careful, when our brains do not have answers, our minds will create them.

My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

I wondered if a blessing is still a blessing if it lasts for only a little while.

You can't find the right roads when the streets are paved.

All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.

Men who are addicted to the passions are like the torch-carrier running against the wind; his hands are sure to be burned.

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

The business of government is to keep the government out of business - that is, unless business needs government aid.