The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

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

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

Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.

Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

If you liked a book, don't meet the author