“And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.”

“I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”

“had my books been any worse I would not have been invited to Hollywood and if they had been any better I would not have come.”

“She was staring after me with an expression she probably would have said was thoughtful.”

“Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cookies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them. (from) "The High Window”

“I looked at the ornaments on the desk. Everything standard and all copper. A copper lamp, pen set and pencil tray, a glass and copper ashtray with a copper elephant on the rim, a copper letter opener, a copper thermos bottle on a copper tray, copper corners on the blotter holder. There was a spray of almost copper-colored sweet peas in a copper vase.It seemed like a lot of copper.”