I’ve found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passe before it gets into print.
The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.
Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had.
There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.
It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.
It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.
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.
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.
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.
If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.