The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.

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 private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.

He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

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.

Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.