Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
You can't tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.
I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid
He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.
If people could deal with each other honestly, they would not need agents.
Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.
I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.
Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.
You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.
I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes.
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.
There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.
I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling.
The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.
It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.
Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.
You're broke, eh?" I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.
There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.
However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.
Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had
A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you.
She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.
If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.
Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.
The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.
She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.
When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature.
Two very simple rules: A. You don't have to write. B. You can't do anything else The rest comes of itself.
Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.
I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.