“The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.”

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there’s no point in it….for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,” she said. “But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.

It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it’s going to be told.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.

Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.

The good thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to get dressed up for it.

The better the actor, the more stupid he is.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

All’s love, yet all’s law.

The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.

Progress is The law of life: man is not Man as yet.

How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.