Mary Roberts Rinehart

“Her eyes filled. "He forgot my birthday, two weeks ago," she said. "It was the first one he had ever forgotten, in nineteen of them." Nineteen! Nineteen from thirty-five leaves sixteen!”

“The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.”

“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.”

“In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue...”

“A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over.”

“I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.”

“It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.”

“War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle. War is a boy being carried on a stretcher, looking up at God’s blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorsa for the son she has given.”

“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.”