I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.

The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach.

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.

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.

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

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.