Hammett used to be irritated by that and would answer that nobody ever deliberately wrote a potboiler, you just did the best you could and woke up to find it good or no good.
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.
I was so often silent angry with Hammett for making the situation hard on me, not knowing then that the dying do not, should not, be asked to think about anything but their own minute of running time.
My father was often angry when I was most like him.
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.
Decisions particularly important ones have always made me sleepy perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should...
Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.
Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort at the least and deat...
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?