The Books I Haven't Written Are Better

The Only Happy Talkers Are Dandies Who Extract Pleasure From The Very Perishability Of Their Material And Who Would Not Be Able To Tolerate The Isolation Of All Other Forms Of Composition; For Most Good Talkers, When They Have Run Down, Are Miserable; They Know That They Have Betrayed Themselves, That They Have Taken Material Which Should Have A Life Of Its Own, To Dispense It In Noises Upon The Air.

Two Weeks Before His Death, A Friend Asked Him Half Jokingly If He Had Discovered Any Meaning In Life. "yes," He Replied, "there Is A Meaning; At Least, For Me, There Is One Thing That Matters - To Set A Chime Of Words Tinkling In The Minds Of A Few Fastidious People."

The Goal Of Every Culture Is To Decay Through Over-civilization; The Factors Of Decadence, -- Luxury, Skepticism, Weariness And Superstition, -- Are Constant. The Civilization Of One Epoch Becomes The Manure Of The Next.

The Detective Story Itself Is In A Dilemma. It Is A Vein Which Is In Danger Of Being Worked Out, The Demand Is Constant, The Powers Of Supply Variable, And The Reader, With Each One He Absorbs, Grows A Little More Sophisticated And Harder To Please, While The Novelist, After Each One He Writes, Becomes A Little More Exhausted.

Everything Is A Dangerous Drug Except Reality Which Is Unendurable.