All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.

Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people.

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.