If I need something, I'll invent it.

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.

When you receive a cancer diagnosis, you're more vulnerable than at any other time in your life. I've personally had the experience twice. My only hope for survival was alternatives. But that was my decision, what I thought was best for me.

I am not one of those who wants Obama to fail. If he does well, that means the country's doing well.

A lot of people assume I have a great hat collection, but kids steal my hats at every show. I've had all these hats that I've loved, but now they're in some little kids' possession. It's difficult to replenish. I don't think the kids realize this.

Everyone says you've got to do a foundation and legal structure to finance social change. What nonsense!

When it comes to losing with United, I feel solely responsible for it. I can't help it. My brain will work like mad after a defeat. I want to know where I have made the wrong decisions, how I could have changed things for this fantastic club.

Find your passion is in life, and do what you can to integrate that into your work life. That's not to say you won't have occasional frustrations in your job - that just goes with the territory - but at least you'll feel better inside, and that, over time, will mean more to you than you might think.

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

The reality is that al Qaeda has been trying to attack the United States since long before Iraq.

The internet is an lite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

Men learn while they teach.

Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice.

Beliefs are stronger than mere ideas, thoughts and notions, be careful about what you believe.

People think that child-support enforcement benefits children, but it doesn't.

Now I am married to a man who is a partner and friend. We come from similar backgrounds and share values and interests. It is a continual source of pleasure to talk to him.

Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war.

I'd like to have longer hair, but mine just doesn't grow.

We could go work on curing cancer. We could go work on building spaceships. We could go work on art projects. What's fun about working at Asana is we get to work on all of them at the same time.

Life is like walking through Paradise with peas in your shoes.

In a private room he showed me the first specimens of gold, that is he was not certain if it was gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was gold.

Time is not a thing, thus nothing which is, and yet it remains constant in its passing away without being something temporal like the beings in time.

I have a Twitter, but I'm not a tweeter... if that really makes sense.

Barack Obama may have found the answer to his biggest rhetorical challenge: When millions of voters are unemployed or underemployed, how does a president simultaneously sound realistic and optimistic?

I know a way to stay friends forever, There's really nothing to it, I tell you what to do, And you do it.