It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.
All reading for pleasure is entertainment.
Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.
I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read.
If you believe in an idea, you don’t own you, it owns you.
Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.
You can’t tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.
When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.
I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
I’m in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling.
I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.
If people could deal with each other honestly, they would not need agents.
The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.
Let us never accept the point of view that mysteries are written by hacks. The poorest of us shed our blood over every chapter. The best of us start from scratch with every new book.
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
LA doesn’t have the heart of a paper cup.
All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and if it does not it dies and is forgotten.