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. - Rex Stout

Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damn fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the ...

There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions – is he tall, is he short? – he had better quit.

What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damn thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.