I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.

I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.

The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.

They write them long because they can't write them short.

A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else.

The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.

It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.