“Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.”

“Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.”

“Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.”

“I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it.”

“I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien.”

“I read all the time... I read a lot of history books.”

“I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.”

“I try to stay in good physical shape, I don't smoke, I don't drink.”

“I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger.”

“If I need something, I'll invent it.”

“If the public likes you, you're good.”

“If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.”

“I'm 82 years old, wherever I go everybody knows me, but here's why... I'm a merchandiser, I'm not just a writer, I stay in every avenue you can think of.”

“I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.”

“I'm a country boy. I hate New York. But that's where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.”

“Imagine this guy hits Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger and knocks him out. You hit Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger, he'll beat the crap out of you.”

“My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I've got all these names... but my Dad always called me Mick.”

“Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.”

“Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.”

“Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.”

“See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead. Otherwise you don't have a hero. You can't kill a hero. That's why I never let him get older.”

“Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer.”

“Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture.”

“Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn't get past Hugo.”