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

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

The roof might fall in; anything could happen..

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 ….

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

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..

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

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

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter..

To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted..

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….

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….

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

It's sometimes better to pretend I don't hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun..

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

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

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

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….

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

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