A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality

You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.

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

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

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

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.