A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.

More and more people care about religious tolerance as fewer and fewer care about religion.

I remember the period in the 1980s where the Beatles were terminally uncool, and it seemed to me then like they were just my little secret, and the rest of the world didn't know anything about them.

Being smart can make happiness elusive. Being REALLY smart can help you find it in more places than most.

Look at those two. Wasting time. You wouldn't catch me doing that.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

I know it's important to do more than just complain when there's something you don't like. You need to try to do something about it, or you're nothing but a whiner.

Painting is like Golf, the fewer the strokes I take, the better the picture.

I am conscious of my own limitations. That consciousness is my only strength.

Claim everything. Explain nothing. Deny everything.

Vice is its own reward.