If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling a sled across the frozen wastes?

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

Life is tragic but it's equally comic.

When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.