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.

I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.

I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness.

A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.

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

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

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