Tall, aren't you? I didn't mean to be.

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.

I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.

Your rat tail is all the fashion now. I prefer a bushy plume, carried straight up. You are Siamese and your ancestors lived in trees. Mine lived in palaces. It has been suggested to me that I am a bit of a snob. How true! I prefer to be.

Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.

She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.