Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them.

The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off

Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia... ...Wolfe seemed absorbed in the pictures. Looking at him, I said to myself, "He's in a battle with the elements. He's fighting his way through a raging blizzard, just sitting there comfortably looking at pictures of snowflakes. That's the advantage of being an artist, of having imagination." I said aloud, "You mustn't go to sleep, sir, it's fatal. You freeze to death." The League of Frightened Men

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

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

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