US "short-story writer, novelist".
"He was considered master of "hard-boiled" crime stories, e.g., "The Big Sleep," 1939 and "Playback," 1958."
The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called "significant literature" will only be sold . . . by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles."
The more you reason the less you create.
"If you believe in an ideal, you don't own you, it owns you."
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
"If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come."
