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

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.

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.

To say goodbye is to die a little.

Education means nourishing the mind and make it develop in order to see beyond the limitations of current social perception.

There was for everything a possibility, an invisible pattern that could be made manifest given work and the right materials.

Some writers need to sink in order to feel what their characters feel

One man's insanity is another man's genius

There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn’t awash in cash — and I don’t want to go back.

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.

I like to write scenes in the middle of the night. We could change every word of Family Ties between Monday and Friday.

What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?

There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did.

O, where is loyalty? If it be banished from the frosty head, Where shall it find a harbor in the earth?