I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.

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

The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.

I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.

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

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

Shake your business up and pour it. I haven't got all day.