Shrews are made, not born.

The smell of moist earth and lilacs hung in the air like wisps of the past and hints of the future.

the smell of lilacs crept poignantly into the room like a remembered spring.

Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.

You can't drown your troubles ... because troubles can swim.

There is no such thing as an ex-exhibitionist.

When you're counting alibis and not apples, one plus one equals none.

Common sense is a vastly overrated virtue. I myself prefer the spark of genius.

When someone gives me three reasons instead of one, I'm inclined not to believe any of them.

I wish people would quit telling me to think. I think. Thinking's easy. It's not thinking that's hard.

Violence is the instinctive response to fear.

Nobody wants to believe that existence carries on without at least taking a stumble from their departure of this world.

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.

All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.

People don't expect me to be as funny as I am.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

You could use a flower, a candle flame, anything you want that's suggestive of beauty and eternality.

Russian literature saved my soul. When I was a young girl in school and I asked what is good and what is evil, no one in that corrupt system could show me.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

It is characteristic of the emotions of the very young infant that they are of an extreme and powerful nature.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.