As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces.

The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

Many people come and go, knowing not why they ever did so.A miserable thing can it be -unconscious of why thy Creator made thee.

The songs were all either fast or sad. Because all songs should be either fast or sad.

If I ask God to punish my enemy with vengeful prayers, then He is fair to allow the enemy to do the same for me.

I do not believe in an atonement which is admirably wide, but fatally ineffectual.

He speaks English, Spanish, and he's bilingual too.

For Poland, the United States is the most important ally.

When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.

As it turned out, though, it was a lot easier to say that someone deserved to die for what they did than it was to take the responsibility to make that happen.

The sense of smell in all dogs is their primary doorway to the world around them.

Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.