An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world of disasters.

There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write each other letters once a year.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him,, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married.

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

I am not a leader but a pathfinder and a motivator.

I believe that the emphasis on curbing population growth diverts attention from the more vital issue of pursuing policies that allow the population to take care of itself.

A positive mind plus positive words will equal a positive outcome.

Contrary to popular belief, the experience of terror does not make you braver. Perhaps though, it is easier to hide your fear when you're afraid all the time.

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.

It's easy to forget when you're an elite athlete that everyone else gets nervous as well. Even the best people in the world, at whatever they do, they're still nervous

Scripture is, at its heart, the great story that we sing in order not just to learn it with our heads but to become part of it through and through, the story that in turn becomes part of us.

the urgent crowds out the essential.

Women who set a low value of themselves make life hard for all women.