A mother! What are we worth really? They all grow up whether you look after them or not. That poor miserable brat of his is growing up, and I certainly licked the hide off her; and she's seen marriage at its worst, and now she's dreaming about 'supermen' and 'great men'. What is the good of doing anything for them?

Venus can see at night without eyes.

I don't know what imagination is, if not an unpruned, tangled kind of memory.

It is most oppressive to be an aunt.

The sensuality, delicacy of literature does not exist for me; only the passion, energy and struggle… Most of my friends deplore this: they are always telling me what I should leave out in order to have success. But I know that nothing has more success in the end than an intelligent ferocity.

Everyone likes the obscene; that is real life.

Los Angeles is a Yukon for crime-story writers.