People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.

If you dont respect me what must you think of yourself?

Men believe death's elections to be a thing inscrutable yet every act invites the act which follows and to the extent that men put one foot before the other they are accomplices in their own deaths as in all such facts of destiny.

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.

The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.

He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.