Mary Roberts Rinehart
Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.Collection: Women
I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.Collection: Money
The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.Collection: Romantic
It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.
A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over.
I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.
The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.Collection: Perseverance
Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation.Collection: Peace
Patience and endurance were not virtues in a woman; they were necessities, forced on her. Perhaps some day things would change and women would renounce them. They would rise up and say: 'We are not patient. We will endure no more.' Then what would happen to the world?Collection: Endurance
Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write.Collection: Writing
The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.Collection: Two
The one pleasure that never palls is the pleasure of not going to church.Collection: Church
Every crucial experience can be regarded either as a setback, or the start of a wonderful new adventure, it depends on your perspective!Collection: Inspirational
Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.Collection: Girl
The greatest weapon in the world ... is ridicule.Collection: World
I have never learned to say 'gas' for gasoline. It seems to me as absurd as if I were to say 'but' for butter.Collection: Gasoline
People that trust themselves a dozen miles from the city, in strange houses, with servants they don't know, needn't be surprised if they wake up some morning and find their throats cut.Collection: Morning
Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just and on the unjust.Collection: Rain
Every crucial experience can be regarded as a setback - or a start of a new kind of development. [You have the responsibility to decide if you will see it as a bad setback or good start!]Collection: Gratitude
when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.Collection: Knowledge
Men play harder than they work; women work harder than they play.Collection: Hard Work
Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it gains sight, it dies.Collection: Sight
That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you.Collection: Tragedy
It's money that brings trouble. It always has and it always will.Collection: Trouble
To men and women who want to do things, there is nothing quite so driving as the force of an imprisoned ego. . . . All genius comes from this class.Collection: Men
there is no truly honest autobiography.Collection: Honest
I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life.Collection: Punctuation Marks
as all women know, there are really no men at all. There are grown-up boys, and middle-aged boys, and elderly boys, and even sometimes very old boys. But the essential difference is simply exterior. Your man is always a boy.Collection: Boys
Conflict is the very essence of life.Collection: Essence
[When working on a book] I have an almost complete detachment from the world I live in, a sort of armor against distraction. I talk to people, move about, appear on the surface much as usual. But later on I have only a confused memory of what has happened during that period.Collection: Memories
Useless as a pulled tooth.Collection: Sarcastic
the theater is the only money-making business I know in which haste apparently rules from first to last.Collection: Haste
There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind!Collection: Philosophy
Young Doctor Arden was gong through the process of reorienting himself after a night's sleep.Collection: Book
From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.Collection: Class
There is a point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger.Collection: Curiosity
Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.Collection: Lightning
Natalie Spenser was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess.Collection: Book
[To her frequently needed plumber:] How would you like to be adopted? I'm sure it would be cheaper.Collection: Would Be
There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt.Collection: Play
Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.Collection: Hands
To the bottle! In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle.Collection: Wine
A cat and a Bible, and nobody needs to be lonely.Collection: Lonely
[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.Collection: Race
Used to move so much, every time the chickens saw the team put in the wagon, they'd lie down on their backs and hold their legs up to be tied!Collection: Lying
I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter.Collection: Names
having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable.Collection: Moving
I have a great deal of mind. It takes a long time to change it.Collection: Long
Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall.Collection: Wall
I suppose that we are only young, Chris, so long as we can forget. After that we merely remember!Collection: Long