Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.

It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues...It's called rock now.

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

For every mountain there is another one. The big question is if you reach the top of the mountain, what then? What do you do then? I suppose you die.

He’ll accept anyone at Hogwarts, s’long as they’ve got the talent. Knows people can turn out okay even if their families weren’ . . .well . . . all tha’ respectable.

Agitation is all about poetry, governance is all about prose.

You will travel in a Land of Marvels

Meditation makes the man Divine and brings the Divine to the world of man.

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

His safety was more important than anything to me. Even if he would never know enough to understand that.

Rich people are committed to enough to do whatever it takes. Period.