Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.

Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.

I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.

Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.

I dont like any of them, because they don't read the books. In Kiss Me Deadly my story is better than his story. Anthony Quinn played in The Lond Wait and he didn't read the book either.

Imagine this guy hits Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger and knocks him out. You hit Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger, he'll beat the crap out of you.

Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.

I'm 82 years old, wherever I go everybody knows me, but here's why... I'm a merchandiser, I'm not just a writer, I stay in every avenue you can think of.

I try to stay in good physical shape, I don't smoke, I don't drink.

Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.

If the public likes you, you're good.

If I need something, I'll invent it.

I'm a country boy. I hate New York. But that's where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.

Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn't get past Hugo.

Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer.

I read all the time... I read a lot of history books.

I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien.

See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead. Otherwise you don't have a hero. You can't kill a hero. That's why I never let him get older.

My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I've got all these names... but my Dad always called me Mick.

I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture.

I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger.

I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.

Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.

Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you knew.

I never have planned a whole lot of future. It's one day at a time.

The aim is to postpone frailty, postpone degenerative disease, debilitation and so on and thereby shorten the period at the end of life, which is passed in a decrepit or disabled state, while extending life as a whole.

Faith is not belief without proof but trust without reservation.

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

I am responsible for managing more schoolteachers' and firemen's money than anybody in the world. That's an enormous responsibility.

Like children, adolescents need a framework. Otherwise they can't cope. When someone has unlimited freedom, it means there's nobody who cares what they're doing.

Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn't work.

If you want creativity, take a zero off your budget. If you want sustainability, take off two zeros.

Do you know how helpless you feel if you have a full cup of coffee in your hand and you start to sneeze?

I know there's Brooklyn and all the boroughs, but Manhattan specifically is so condensed that the energy is very vibrant. Everywhere you look there is something happening.

Telecoms is a national business. There isn't a European market. There's no Telecom Italia in France.

A second type of direct evidence is formed by statements, whether as formal legends or personal information, regarding the age or relative sequence of events in tribal history made by the natives themselves.

Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar.

When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God.

I like doing films and I wish that I could do more but I still have to audition. I don't get offered starring roles in movies even though I've written and starred in a movie.

Kids love to look at pictures of themselves.

Any good director, and I've worked with a few that I would call very good, they know how to disarm any anxieties very quickly.

I don't have TiVo, but I watch a lot of 'Judge Judy' - it makes me happy about my life when I see what the people on that show do.

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first... The first object of any good system must be that of developing first class men.