A really good detective never gets married.

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

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 snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.

You can't tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.