I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.

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've gone to prepare a place for youBut I will come back again.

That is not to say that we can relax our readiness to defend ourselves. Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves.

I've grown as a person. The dynamics on this set are very demanding because we work a lot of hours, it's very sad material, so there's always someone upset because it's really heavy stuff.

Love is a universal force, like gravity, that holds the solar system together and pours into our hearts as life-force - and gets expressed to us most beautifully by small children and animals.

People avenge themselves for the favors done them.

there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is live in your own.

I'm sure there's a hell of a party in Ireland now and I know I don't have anything to do for two-and-a-half days so I'm going to party on

I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10-mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe.

I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.

In times of crisis, it is of utmost importance to keep one's head.