Margaret Ellis Millar (née Sturm) (February 5, 1915 – March 26, 1994) was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer.
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.
People, alas, are more impressed by statistics than they are by ideas.
Violence is the instinctive response to fear.
The day will probably come when you can tell everything about a person from his dreams except his age and weight.
When you're counting alibis and not apples, one plus one equals none.
You have what is known as a lot of character, meaning you can be wrong at the top of your lungs.
Shrews are made, not born.
Private problems don't constitute an excuse for bad manners.
You can't drown your troubles. . . because troubles can swim.
I've reached the age where anyone who lets me talk seems like an old By listening to my memories, you have become part of them.
the emotions at death, as at birth, are instinctive and primitive.
I wish people would quit telling me to think. I think. Thinking's easy. It's not thinking that's hard.
Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.
Any good marriage involves a certain amount of play-acting.
The sun was shining like a congratulation.
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.
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.
the smell of lilacs crept poignantly into the room like a remembered spring.
To the uneducated eye, as to the incurious mind, much of the world is in darkness, and a thousand songs are lost on the unlistening ear.
Common sense is a vastly overrated virtue. I myself prefer the spark of genius.