I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know. (Nero Wolfe)

[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

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

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces.

The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

We used to believe that memories were best retrieved in the same place that they were first laid down. Like everything else we think we know, that's not so clear anymore.

Friends are relatives you make for yourself.

Humanities education is the worst thing for an industrialist.

Most teams aren't teams at all but merely collections of individual relationships with the boss. Each individual vying with the others for power, prestige and position.

Film acting has been a very pure experience, because you have to give the purest form of yourself as an artist.

Some days I would get so exhausted, nauseous, in pain - just from going back through things. It's almost as if I had the experience and then the meta-experience.

I fear nothing for God is with me!

A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

All succeeds with people who are sweet and cheerful.