You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain't one.

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

We didn't exactly believe your story.' Then --?' 'We believed your two hundred dollars.' 'You mean --' She seemed not to know what he meant. 'I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth,' he explained blandly, 'and enough more to make it all right.

Nick: "Don't you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?" Nora: "No, thanks." Nick: "Maybe it would if I took one.

It's sometimes better to pretend I don't hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun.

...What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with Life.

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.