Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

Never eat in a place called 'Mom's'.

You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.