Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Doyle stokes in a thousand shrewd touches with no effort at all. Wonderful.

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.

To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

Everything in a story should be credible.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

The minute those two little particles inside a woman's womb have joined together, billions of decisions have been made. A thing like that has to come from entropy.

I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.

Being broke is not a disgrace it is only a catastrophe.

To read of a detectives daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

Dignities are like faces no two are the same.

The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.

What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.

I went pretty much for one tone, and I knew at that time that I wanted to play a Rickenbacker.

I don't appreciate a preacher who commits adultery and then goes out and blames me.

First grade is very cheap. It's the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don't do it right.

In any race, when the first half is all about pacing, the second half will be about passing.

I don't think you can really, truly be the partner you want to be until you know on an absolute level that you are a complete person on your own.

Every time you drop the price by a factor of two, you roughly get a 10 times pickup of the number of people who will seriously consider buying it.

There were people I know that got upset that I kiss people. I kiss them for luck and love, that's all. That's what my mother did to me.

Yet, it's our emotions and imperfections that makes us human.

Vilification on the grounds of race or religion is always wrong. There's no place for inciting hatred within our Australia society.

No, I'm not a vegetarian. I do eat that way. I actually eat vegan quite a lot. I feel better when I eat that way, and I think there's been a lot of proof that's come up over the last however many years, that you can't deny, I don't think, that meat or dairy aren't all that good for us.

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.

You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.

If you happen to be in the right place at the right time, the capitalist system is a beautiful thing.

We do this basically for ourselves. People appreciate it, which is cool, but I think they appreciate that we're doing it for ourselves. We're doing it our way, and how people like it is not up to us. We like it.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

One of the things I really love about restaurants is that in many ways, they are the ultimate democratic institutions, where you get to walk in the door, plunk down your money, and for however long that you're there, you can be anyone you want to be.

I think of Pope Gregory the Great. He wanted the cloister. He wanted to pray and study, and yet he was thrust into this administrative job, and he submitted to that. And in that submission, he became a great leader. You could say that the only person who is safe to lead is the person who is free to submit.

The skills of the British intelligence community are a great national asset.

After 'The Blues Brothers,' I wanted to do a good musical number with real dancers and shoot it correctly.

I was at a U2 concert and someone asked me if my hair color was real... I thought to myself, if I had $1 for every time someone asked me this, I would be very rich.

Mind-body medicine should not be an 'alternative,' nor should complementary and integrative medicine be something doctors are not exposed to during their training.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!