It was the most haunting room I've ever seen. Because you know what's in it? All the left­overs, all the paraphernalia that the different condemned men had had with them in the "holding" cells.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it....for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.

Intelligence alone can't make a good writer and style alone can't make a good writer - that is, not a really important or significant writer - but the two things together make a really good writer.

Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that's one definition of a lady.

June, July, all through the warm months she hibernated like a winter animal who did not know spring had come and gone.

I'm one of the world's greatest pencil sharpeners.