No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought? --Poirot

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.

Pain is essential for survival, pain is the tangible material that creeps into our mind and screams at us to recognize that something is terribly wrong.

Joy doesn't ever leave, you know. It's always with you. And one day you'll find it again.

If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.

[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

Luck came to those who left a space for it.

Curiously enough, while very small people have a never-failing sense of their own importance, very great ones are often easily disheartened and put out of conceit with themselves.

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation.

Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform? Are you gonna look me in the face and tell me that?

You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.