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.

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

When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.

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

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

The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.