I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.

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.

But maybe that's how it is with art. You suffer, and in the end, everyone thinks it's cool.

When she smiled at me, I felt unborn poems stirring within.

Time is the journey. Life, the universe and everything is the result.

People who work hard often work too hard. ... May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

As long as I can stay creative and used my mind, it can be 20 hours a day. I sleep four hours, so I've got 20 hours.

I've worked with very few that I considered unpleasant. Dennis the Menace was a joy to work on.

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

Older audiences are hard to win over. They're very specific in their tastes and critical of new music.

I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss.