the unconscious forces that govern accessible memory are the most arbitrary of editors and the absolute masters of our lives.

Every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints. And he can't wear gloves to hide them.

Other people's children, like other people's love affairs, were so much less interesting than one's own.

Money is an acquired taste. But, once acquired, it becomes an addiction.

In a city you thought of all life as human life. You had to live in the heart of the woods to realize that humanity was a slight ripple on the surface of a flood of life that seeped into every vacant crack, flowed into every biological vacuum the moment it occurred.

Even a small, everyday lie is a clue to the personality and preoccupations of the liar, like a dream or any other confection of the mind, that is half-conscious and half-unconscious, as all creative acts must be.

Habit is far stronger than the lessons of experience.