the detective's highest talent lay in the gentle art of seeking favours under the guise of conferring them!

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.

Only with a new ruler do you realize the value of the old.

If I have a swing, I have a shot.

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.

I shot him the bird. (Get it? I shot him the—never mind.)

I did such a gigantic eye roll I almost fell over.

If the law doesn't apply equally to everybody, then you don't really have a system of law.

The spirit of Woody Guthrie lives in the heart of Chris Chandler.

Childbirth being one's most significant life passage, those close to us when we open to birth a baby will never be forgotten.

Never try to outsmart a woman, unless you are another woman.