Everything in a story should be credible.

Doyle stokes in a thousand shrewd touches with no effort at all. Wonderful.

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.

To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

Everything in a story should be credible.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

The minute those two little particles inside a woman's womb have joined together, billions of decisions have been made. A thing like that has to come from entropy.

I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.

Being broke is not a disgrace it is only a catastrophe.

To read of a detectives daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

Dignities are like faces no two are the same.

The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.

What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.

All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated.

Washington has openly declared its right to unilateral use of force anywhere to uphold its own interests.

If I were in a room full of people, I'd rather be the person who is more interesting than the one who is wallpaper.

I have had work done.

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.

Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began.

I would often get called in to play a very loud, obnoxious - which, truth be told, I can be loud and obnoxious. My issue was when it was like a ghetto girl; I didn't think I was good at it; I didn't feel authentic. And so I had insecurities about going in on it.

Any role that big is going to be a challenge for any actor, but for an actor of a young age, it's going to be even tougher.

I'm a bit of lunatic with shoes and jackets and jeans. It's just how I am.

My dad was a longshoreman in the Port of Miami. Tough job. I worked down there in the summer once. One day. Never again. My dad was a no-nonsense guy. As a kid, I hated his rules, but as a man, I understand what he was teaching. He taught me you have to work hard for everything you get.

I look forward to going to work. Everybody is at the top of their game. It was like we just got to play.

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.

Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only if peradventure he may be able to learn and find some one who will make him able to learn and discern between good and evil and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity.

When you forget about your self consciousness for a moment, you forget about your true self, your real you and your true purpose for a moment.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

Figure skating is not a hobby. It's my work, which I want to do, and do well.

I'm not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things.

To worship a crocodile is better to worship yourself.

Science is what scientists do.

A university is supposed to be a place where all ideas are discussed.

If I could learn to treat triumph and disaster the same, then I would find bliss.

When you see me on TV against one of the other girls, they look 10 times better than me, and I'm OK with that. I make a conscious effort not to wear that much makeup and not have my hair so perfectly groomed. That's just not me. I'm not going to be perfect.

People have known of Shakespeare's homosexuality down through the ages.