... nothing is so boring as devotion.

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.

I was thought of before I was born. I am more important than money. If money was more important than me I would not exist. There are days when I wake up I have no money.

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

Like a flame burning away the darknessLife is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground.

if only people stopped acting like they've been asked to donate a lung every time somebody asks for something the world would be a better place

The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.

I was a great believer in hot buttered toast at all hours of the day.

A pink sunset - one of the reasons I moved to the seaside in Margate.

Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.

The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement