He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.

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.

Time's arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photograph. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.

With writing, i can do everything. Make nothing to be something, and then make something to big thing. So, i know, that nothing and big thing is so true as same thing

In our world, to do what you want to do, you must first do what you have to do.

I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.

Adoption is grief in reverse.

A speculator is a man who, if he dies at the right time, has a rich widow.

Well, I'll be damned. Oh, this is funny.

I refuse to let what happened to me make me bitter.

Tennis is a fine balance between determination and tiredness.