I began to feel that if religion was either an illusion or a revelation, it was simpler to accept it as an illusion.

[When working on a book] I have an almost complete detachment from the world I live in, a sort of armor against distraction. I talk to people, move about, appear on the surface much as usual. But later on I have only a confused memory of what has happened during that period.

The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.

Conflict is the very essence of life.

my crime books are actually novels and are written as such. One might even say that each one is really two novels, one of which is the story I tell the reader, and the other the buried story I know and let slip now and then into a clue to whet the reader's interest.

Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.