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

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

Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.

I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it.

Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

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.