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A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.  
A really good detective never gets married.  
Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what yo...  
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate,...  
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the so...  
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find ou...  
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes jus...  
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away sh...  
He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel fo...  
He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.  
I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.  
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd ...  
I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on princip...  
I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that...  
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Holl...  
It is not a fragrant world.   Society
It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a...  
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained gl...  
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.  
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startle...  
Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with t...  
Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our ...  
The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself ou...  
The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you c...  
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather...  
The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgari...  
The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press e...  
The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude tha...  
The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, m...  
The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obv...  
The streets were dark with something more than night.  
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand...  
Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let...