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.

Old men make wars that young men may die.

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

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

To the bottle! In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle.

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

Death was a beginning and not an end; it was the morning of the spirit. Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls wakened to the morning, rested; the first fruits of them that slept.