I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.

I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.

As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter.