Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.

It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?

Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.