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

The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.

The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

To say goodbye is to die a little.