Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood

A good title is the title of a successful book.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.

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

That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.

All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity.

I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.