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.

Politics is still the man's game. The women are allowed to do the chores, the dirty work, and now and then--but only occasionally--one is present at some secret conference or other. But it's not the rule. They can go out and get the vote, if they can and will; they can collect money, they can be grateful for being permitted to work. But that is all.

Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.

I began to feel that if religion was either an illusion or a revelation, it was simpler to accept it as an illusion.

Patience and endurance were not virtues in a woman; they were necessities, forced on her. Perhaps some day things would change and women would renounce them. They would rise up and say: 'We are not patient. We will endure no more.' Then what would happen to the world?

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.

These are times of action. Men think and then act; sometimes, indeed, they simply act.