Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.

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

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.

No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.

Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.