"There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions – is he tall, is he short? – he had better quit."

“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.”

“I saw every performance Nijinsky danced in New York, and I see every baseball game I can get to. You watch a good second baseman digging for a badly thrown ball without letting his foot leave base and it's the same beautiful impossibility as a good pas de deux in Swan Lake.”

“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. There was no such conception of justice until after 1830. There was no such thing as a policeman or a detective in the world before 1830, because the modern conception of the policeman and detective, namely, a man whose only function is to find out who did it and then get the evidence that will punish him, did not exist. ... In Paris before the year 1800 – read the Dumas stories – there were gangs of people whose business was to go out and punish wrongdoers. But why? Because they had hurt De Marillac or Richelieu or the Duke or some Huguenot noble, not just because they had harmed society. It is only the modern policeman that is out to protect society.”

“My God you love to get them, and good Lord you hate to answer them.”

“There are various ways to call a man a liar. One way is just to scream it at him, which doesn't prove anything. Another is to establish facts by long and patient investigation. Still another way is not to call him a liar at all – let him do it himself.”

“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.”