Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.

The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.

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

I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.

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.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.