I would like it to be said that I was a good writer of detective and thriller stories.

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.

Stop shouting praise the Lord when you can't handle your life, you can't represent God when you are messing up his reputation.

You have to remember that the hard days are what make you stronger. The bad days make you realize what a good day is. If you never had any bad days, you would never have that sense of accomplishment!

Abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends.

Nothing is easy, but who wants nothing?

By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind.

My wife doesn't care what I do when I'm away, as long as I don't have a good time.

What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?

Everything I know, I write about. My only research is what I did.

I'm like a blue-collar writer. I just sit down every day and I write.

Maroon 5 is crazy to me, I would love to work with them.