The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.

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.

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

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

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.