“Everybody tells me what a timesaver the Internet is, and how they can't believe they ever got along without it. And I know what they mean, but every time I use it I wind up wondering what people did with their spare time before computers came along to suck it all up.”

“I dialed it now, and the machine picked up. I listened to a dead man's voice. I hung up, wondering how long it would be before someone unplugged the machine, how long before the telephone company cut off the phone service.You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time.”

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

“What time is it?""Time?""Time.""Oh," She said. "A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened."She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night.”

“I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.”

“I haven't got anything against cats. I haven't got anything against elk either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep one in the store so I'll have a place to hang my hat.”

“I don't know about the rest of the country but in New York more people have learned anonymity from rent control than ever discovered it in a twelve-step program.”