read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.

I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.