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

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

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