James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.

If you're not tough it's hard to survive in this world; and if you're not kind then you don't deserve to survive.

Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.

He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

The streets were dark with something more then night.

She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.