"To say goodbye is to die a little."
- Raymond Chandler
"I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings."
"Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watchi..."
"There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more import..."
"Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where t..."
"Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead."
"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."
"Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say."
"The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time."
"In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns."