I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

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

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls.

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.