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.

Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.

Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it.

Men were not equal in the effort they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal result. ... Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality of effort and result, no.

The greatest weapon in the world ... is ridicule.

The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting.

there is no truly honest autobiography.