[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job …

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one s…

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all - what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to s…

God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.