Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.
Come on in,” Elaine said. “She’s already here. Pam, this is Mr. Scudder, Matthew Scudder. Matt, I’d like you to meet Pam.
Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to know God’s will. You just wait and see what happens, and that’s it.
Why on earth should I care whether people read me with their eyes or their ears?
Ideas come to people who are receptive to them.
And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.
As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.
When you get older, keeping the private stuff private seems less important.
If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.
I never know what I’m going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.
Donald Westlake’s Parker novels are among the small number of books I read over and over. Forget all that crap you’ve been telling yourself about War and Peace and Proust-these are the books you’ll want on that desert island.
Something I learned long ago. It is not necessary to know what a person is afraid of. It is enough to know the person is afraid.
I wouldn’t presume to define noir – if we could define it, we wouldn’t need to use a French word for it – but it seems to me it’s more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.