how magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity?

There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.

Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

I'm a morning person, which is a hideous thing to be. No one likes morning people, not even other morning people.

Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

There's always time to read. Don't trust a writer who doesn't read. It's like eating food prepared by a cook who doesn't eat.

Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.

Reporting is pretty vital to me. It keeps me connected to the world. A 40-hour-per-week day job may be less feasible as time goes on.

If you teach your children, teach them the Truth of God.

...knew the futility of agonizing over why things had transpired as they had. What could have happened, did.

I don't like to drink alone 'cause there's nobody to fight with.

We saw his [Donald Trump] children appointed this week to formal roles in the transition. A lot of ethics experts looking at that and saying that there is not a blind trust.

I wanted to be a meteorologist. I wanted to be a marine biologist

Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they? Think not of them; thou has thy music too.

Nick as in my former boyfriend Nick. Ex-rat, ex-boyfriend, ex-alive if I ever got hold of him Nick.

When a certain show or film or celebrity captures the imagination of the masses that has a good deal to say about us, I think, and what is happening in our collective psyche.

If I put a value on my music, and no one's prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan; it can't work.

Basic scientific research is scientific capital.