The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.

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.

It is naive to think that success will drop into our lives like manna from heaven

For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world.

Take some books and read

No judicial system could do society's work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.

I know people go on about Twitter, but it is amazing. It's whatever you want it to be, and all the women got in there before the boys.

Slaves. though we be enrolled Minds are never to be sold.

You can't stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh.

You know I'm just getting bigger, man. It's like, my shoulders don't fit in some things.

Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.

It's pretty rare that I watch a movie now without seeing the script in a way that I hate, where I can see the stage directions and the choices that the actors are making.