The more you reason the less you create.

The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

It is not a fragrant world.

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.

I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes.

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.