Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Life is the best left hooker I ever saw, although some say it was Charlie White of Chicago

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.

He remembered poor Julian [actually F. Scott Fitzgerald] and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how someone had said to Julian, "Yes, they have more money."

Keep right on lying to me. That's what I want you to do.