The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.

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.

He won't listen to the music, and I can't turn it off.

One day can make your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is, is four or five days that change everything.

And the whole is greater than the part.

The entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.

When we translate, we always to some extent betray the text we are translating. That is why translation is so hard and thankless. All you can do is to fail in the least egregious way possible.

Less is more, unless you're Al Gore.

We need to have a plan equal to the challenge.

The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.

I'd rather him (Grover Alexander) pitch a crucial game for me drunk, then anyone I've ever known sober. He was that good.

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man.