When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does.... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way.

What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy and utterly lost kind of writing, and have made of it something that intellectuals claw each other about?

The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.