My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery..

The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps..

You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain't one..

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter..

The people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest at it, and they're easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You'd think they'd be ….

I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel..

Who shot him? I asked. The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: Somebody with a gun..

You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards..

Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken..

I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve..

I don t mind a reasonable amount of trouble..

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of..

When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to g….

The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two..

I haven't any sort of plans for the future but I reckon things will work out in some manner..

I haven't laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother..

Talking is something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice..

Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight..

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a goo….

If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of wheth….

He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him see the works..