If your writing doesn`t keep you up at night, it won`t keep anyone else up either".

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called.

You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.

That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.

If your writing doesn`t keep you up at night, it won`t keep anyone else up either".