Author Quotes

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.

The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.

Please all, and you will please none.

Appearances are often deceiving.

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.

Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.

Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.

After all is said and done, more is said than done.

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.

Murderers will try to recall the sequence of events, they will remember exactly what they did just before and just after. But they can never remember the actual moment of killing. This is why they will always leave a clue.

When I was eight or nine, there was a very scary case of a guy who murdered four children in my community. I had no conscious memory of it, but now I'm sure that we all must have felt for these kids. We must have felt it, but no one was saying anything. I wonder now how much that impacted on me with

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.

I think there are two prevailing views of the suburbs in the States: either they're this sort of tedious place, where everyone is the same, buys the same food and drives around in their little minivans, or the view is that the suburbs are extremely perverse in a humorous way.

I think it was Freud who said that we're all arrested at a certain age. For me, it was always 13.

I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

The highest qualities of character... must be earned.

Religion is not a conclusion of the reason.

It is easy to condemn, it is better to pity.

I cannot harness a horse. I am afraid of a cow.

I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.

Every life is march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

Patience is passion tamed.