Two very simple rules: A. You don't have to write. B. You can't do anything else The rest comes of itself.

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.

A good writer sees the world, not through his own eyes, but through his reader's mind.

I will not be a victim. I will not think like a victim. I am going to avenge all those little girls. I am going to win.

It was tempting to take refuge in feelings of British superiority, although I disliked myself for it and hoped it didn't show.

Tally wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage.

Because you simply cannot draw these things out forever. At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.

Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.

No woman dares express all she thinks.

I got completely fed up with that Hollywood blockbuster mentality. I couldn't take it seriously any longer.

We moved wordlessly from one room to another, from the room of the dead to the room where time lay in pages everywhere I looked.

Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.