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

It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.

I have a great deal of mind. It takes a long time to change it.

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

my crime books are actually novels and are written as such. One might even say that each one is really two novels, one of which is the story I tell the reader, and the other the buried story I know and let slip now and then into a clue to whet the reader's interest.

There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind!

Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.