[To her frequently needed plumber:] How would you like to be adopted? I'm sure it would be cheaper.

The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.

Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation.

People that trust themselves a dozen miles from the city, in strange houses, with servants they don't know, needn't be surprised if they wake up some morning and find their throats cut.

Love is like the measles, all the worse when it comes late.

having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable.

I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life.

Every crucial experience can be regarded either as a setback, or the start of a wonderful new adventure, it depends on your perspective!

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

Conflict is the very essence of life.

Love! In the midst of darkness, you're my guiding light.

I mean, if you have to wake up in the morning to be validated by the editorial page of the New York Times, you got a pretty sorry existence.

I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease

Black audiences are hard. They always think they're better than you. So you got to come with a little extra to satisfy them.

People are concerned, here again, about life, and haven't given a whole lot of attention to how you make fathers responsible for the lives they bring into the world.

You prep, you prep, you prep. And on the day that you film, you let all of that go. I try to achieve emptiness as much as possible - the Zen thing - to let the deal come out of that nothing.

Letting events end is not rude. Everything ends.

The sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach

And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.

Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, meeting the check of such another day.