From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.
I certainly admire people who do things.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.
Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn’t like it is either crazy or sober.
A really good detective never gets married.
There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.
You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
The more you reason the less you create.
If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn’t need a gun, you’d better take one along that worked.
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
California, the department store state.
The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.