She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. Th….

They write them long because they can't write them short..

Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuen….

It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people..

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come..

Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a….

Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already..

You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off..

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that..

Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the ….

The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point..

The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too much to heart. He should have a touc….

An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love..

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me..

When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun..

When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth a….

I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic..

As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style..

I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars..

Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober..

The overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the ….