Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

You can't tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.

The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion.

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

I'm killing time and it's dying hard.