Margaret Ellis Millar (née Sturm) (February 5, 1915 – March 26, 1994) was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer.
Violence is the instinctive response to fear.
the emotions at death, as at birth, are instinctive and primitive.
Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it's a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.
the smell of lilacs crept poignantly into the room like a remembered spring.
Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.
I didn't mind giving up carnality, jewelry and red meat in return for comradeship and an afterlife.
Private problems don't constitute an excuse for bad manners.
Any good marriage involves a certain amount of play-acting.
The sun was shining like a congratulation.
There is no such thing as an ex-exhibitionist.
People, alas, are more impressed by statistics than they are by ideas.
Perfect young men don't get murdered, they don't even get born.
You have what is known as a lot of character, meaning you can be wrong at the top of your lungs.
That's what a conscience is made of, scar tissue. . . Little strips and pieces of remorse sewn together year by year until they formed a distinctive pattern, a design for living.
The world of maps is nice and flat and simple. It has areas for people and areas for monsters. What a shock it is to discover the world is round and the areas merge and nothing separates the monsters and ourselves; that we are all whirling around in space together and there isn't even a graceful way of falling off.
Don't borrow trouble. The interest is too high.
Civilization has imposed countless restrictions and conventions on each of us, with the result that the subconscious in the majority of us has become a storage room without a key. We are forced to suppress or forget so many events and ideas and thoughts that those to which we should have access are lost in the welter. However, there are people who seem capable of unlocking this part of their minds and extracting relevant information.
When someone gives me three reasons instead of one, I'm inclined not to believe any of them.
You can't drown your troubles. . . because troubles can swim.
When you're counting alibis and not apples, one plus one equals none.