It is only in his head that man is heroic; in the pit of his stomach he is always a coward.

I suppose that we are only young, Chris, so long as we can forget. After that we merely remember!

Every crucial experience can be regarded either as a setback, or the start of a wonderful new adventure, it depends on your perspective!

... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.

Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.

When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at once. The galled places still ache.

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.