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

Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.

For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.

No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.

Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?