If your ego is in good shape you will pretend you're surprised if a National Chairman calls you to tell you his party wants to nominate you for President of the United States, but you're not really surprised.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

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

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.

Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt.

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

Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.