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

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

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.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

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.

...'To the making of many books there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh.'– Ecclesiastes 12:12

Your happiness is in direct proportion to the amount you serve others.

So many miracles have not yet happened.

Separation can make us feel helpless and powerless, like we have no control. To withstand this negative force, we must return to our inner core, and that takes work. That takes time and patience.

The blues is a mighty long road. Or it could be a river, one that twists and turns and flows into a sea of limitless musical potential.

I realized that a methane-oxygen rocket engine could achieve a specific impulse greater than 380.

An old friend is a new house.

I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. I feel nothing at all.

But in the end, we can’t live our lives by ‘what if’ and ‘if only.’ We can only do the best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That’s why the truth is so important.

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.