It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.

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

The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.

Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had

I'm killing time and it's dying hard.

It is just possible that the tensions in a novel of murder are the simplest and yet most complete pattern of the tensions on which we live in this generation.

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.