The face she made at me was probably meant for a smile. Whatever it was, it beat me. I was afraid she'd do it again, so I surrendered

The truth is you don't like the theater except the times when you're in a room by yourself putting the play on paper.

Strictly speaking, there are no real substitutes for sexual satisfaction

Nora: "How do you feel?" Nick: "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober.

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.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

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.