“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.”

“But surely for everything you have to love you have to pay some price.”

“Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.”

“Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.”

“Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.”

“Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.”

“Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.”

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.”

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

“I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.”

“I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.”

“If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.”

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.”

“It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.”

“Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.”

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”

“One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.”

“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.”

“The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.”

“The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn.”

“The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.”

“There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.”

“There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.”

“Too much mercy... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.”

“Very few of us are what we seem.”

“Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.”