Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small….

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, s….

We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal f….

If people could deal with each other honestly, they would not need agents..

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.….

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen….

The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it i….

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself..

It is not a fragrant world..

California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing..

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others..

I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes..

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women..

I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail….

I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the ev….

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I wa….

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees ….

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, ….

Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck..

There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the gro….