There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.

The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.

I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.

You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.