Erle Stanley Gardner Quotes

I like what I like and not what I'm supposed to like because of mass rating. And I very much dislike the things I don't like.

It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.

Now listen, Lam," he said, "you’re a nice egg but you’ve got yourself poured into the wrong pan.

Dear Editor: It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.

Courage is the antidote to danger.

Just because people are liars is no reason for us to be fools.

To reach your goal, remember that courage is the only antidote for danger.

I have one weapon," Mason said. "It's a powerful weapon. But sometimes it's hard to wield it because you don't know just where to grab hold of it." "What weapon is that?" Della Street asked. "The truth," Mason said.

Then I’ll have more fun searching in vain then marrying one of the wrong sort.

When a man starts running away from things in life he builds up a whole chain of complexes and fear.

it takes a powerful motivation to lead to murder. That’s why people don’t usually murder comparative strangers.

We’re a dramatic people,” Perry Mason said slowly. “We’re not like the English. The English want dignity and order. We want the dramatic and the spectacular. It’s a national craving. We’re geared to a rapid rate of thought. We want to have things move in a spectacular manner.

Life is like that. We can only see from birth to death. The rest of it is cut from our vision." Drake

I told you just what she was—all velvet and claws!

A great believer in precedent,' Della Street said. 'I think if he were ever confronted with a really novel situation he'd faint. He runs to his law books, digs around like a mole and finally comes up with case that's what he calls on all fours and was decided seventy-five or a hundred years ago.

You might be interested in his economic philosophy, Mr. Mason. He believed men attached too much importance to money as such. He believed a dollar represented a token of work performed, that men were given these tokens to hold until they needed the product of work performed by some other man, that anyone who tried to get a token without giving his best work in return was an economic counterfeiter. He felt that most of our depression troubles had been caused by a universal desire to get as many tokens as possible in return for as little work as possibly - that too many men were trying to get lost of tokens without doing any work. He said men should cease to think in terms of tokens and think, instead, only in terms of work performed as conscientiously as possible.

will-have a tendency to

A nurse,” I said, “would be wearing a starched uniform, and she’d have a fever thermometer ready to jab into a patient’s mouth at the first sign of acute convalescence.

overboard,

There was that about her which indicated she was warily watchful.

reason I am telling you all of this is that, according to Harrod, Fern Driscoll

The best fighters don’t worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking.

Events are like telephone poles, streaming back past the observation platform of a speeding train.

Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial,

I like loose clothes, loose company, and loose talk, and to hell with the people who don’t.

I take it," the lawyer remarked musingly, "patience isn't one of your virtues." "I didn't know," she said, "that patience WAS a virtue.

The whole structure of the law has to be a dignified, imposing edifice and built on firm foundations, if it is going to stand. Whenever you violate the law, you are tearing down a part of that structure, regardless of what goal you may want to achieve.

Ed McBain (as Evan Hunter and Richard Marsten), Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Andrew Vachss, Loren D. Estleman, Carroll John Daly, Brett Halliday, Raoul Whitfield, Mark Timlin, Richard Prather, Leigh Brackett, Erle Stanley Gardner (pre Perry Mason), James Ellroy, Clark Howard, Max Brand. In addition, rising paper costs prevented me from making this volume even heavier, as I had to withdraw material by Ed Gorman, James Reasoner, Ed Lacy, Frank Gruber, Loren D. Estleman, Derek Raymond, Robert Edmond Alter, Frederick C. Davis and Jonathan Craig – so look out for these names elsewhere. They are certainly worth a detour. But the

But don’t they have more sunshine here than they do in San Francisco? Don’t you have lots of fog?” “Fog!” the man exclaimed. “Why that’s the thing that makes San Francisco. When that fog comes rolling in from the ocean, it peps you up. It’s bracing, stimulating. There’s a lot of rush and bustle in connection with San Francisco. Down here, people seem to have the hookworm. You girls really don’t live here, do you?” “What makes you think we don’t?” Della said. “Too much class—too much pep.

Della Street, Perry Mason’s confidential secretary, said, “A couple of lovebirds have strayed into the office without an appointment. They insist it’s a matter of life and death.” “Everything is,” Mason said. “If you start with the idea of perpetuating life, you must accept the inevitable corollary of death—but I presume these people aren’t interested in my philosophical ideas.” “These people,” Della Street announced, “are interested in each other, in the singing of the birds, the blue of the sky, the moonlight on water, the sound of the night wind in the trees.” Mason laughed. “It’s infectious. You are getting positively romantic, poetic, and show evidence of having been exposed to a highly contagious disease . . . . Now, what the devil would two lovebirds want with the services of a lawyer who specializes in murder cases?

Mary was stretched out on the lounge by the pool reading Agatha Christie’s new book, Dumb Witness, which a friend had sent her from England. I was reading Erich Maria Remarque’s sadly beautiful, Three Comrades. MGM had purchased it and were making a film adaptation starring Margaret Sullavan, who I happened to adore. We’d be here all week so I’d also brought Erle Stanley Gardner’s new Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Dangerous Dowager.

Cook advised aspiring authors against waiting for inspiration, which he believed to be the last resort of the lazy writer. He himself had written two 33,000-word stories a week for months at a time. And this was precisely the schedule Gardner set for

Erle Stanley Gardner

And then what happens to the reformer, lover? He either has to build up a political machine or else he’s defeated at the next election. If he builds up a political machine, he has to do it by distributing gravy to the boys who are on the inside.—Hell, Donald, politicians always have cake. The people pass it to them on silver platters, and when the politicians cut it, they have to cut a piece for each of their friends. Otherwise, the friend becomes an enemy.—

We have graft today. A hundred years ago we had graft. We probably have more today than we had a hundred years ago. For three generations now people have been following reformers, fighting all sort of graft.—And what has it brought them, sweetheart? Not a damn thing, except more graft than when they started

Every eight years, the people swallow some politician hook, line, and sinker and make him president. They hold him on the political stomach for about six years. Then they commence to get indigestion because the politicians quit pouring the soda bicarbonate of publicity into their stomachs. At the end of eight years, they vomit him up in order to swallow someone else,

did you ever hear of a politician who wasn’t elected on a platform of economy in office?” “That isn’t it,” I said. “Oh yes it is, lover. I can remember way back. Even then all politicians were promising economy, and still it wasn’t new. They’d always hold up the extravagances of the past administration before the horrified eyes of the voters. They’d pledge greater economy and get elected.—And there’s never a case on record, lover, where a politician hasn’t spent more than his predecessor in office.

The only reason I collect good money for what I do, is because I’ve demonstrated my ability to do it. If the taxpayers didn’t give you your salary check every month until you’d delivered results, you might have to go hungry a few months,—unless you showed more intelligence than you’re showing on this case.

Don’t ever fool yourself that facts don’t fit, if you get the right explanation. They’re just like jigsaw puzzles—when you get them right, they’re all going to fit together.

You hear a lot about people who are afraid to die. Well, they’re nothing compared to the ones who are afraid to live—people who go through life just making motions—and conventional motions at that.

I’m going to tell you something about myself. I pay my own way as I go through the world, and I want the privilege of living my own life. I left North Mesa because I couldn’t do just that. I have my own code, my own creed, and my own ideas. I try to be true to them, all of them. I hate hypocrisy. I like fair play. I want to live my own life in my own way, and I’m willing to let other people live their lives in their way.

He had to have someone else give him advice. That’s the trouble with him. He’s never learned to stand on his own two feet and take things as they come.

I’m perfectly capable of living my own life. If I get into something, I want to get out of it through my own efforts. If I can’t, I want to stay there. I don’t want to have Hal Anders rushing into the city to lift me up out of the gutter, brush the mud off my clothes, smile sweetly down at me, and say, ‘Won’t you come home now, Mae, marry me, settle down, and live happily ever after?

lot of men try caveman tactics because a lot of girls fall for them. I don’t. The minute a man starts pushing me around, I want to hit him with anything I can get my hands on. I think I have more trouble that way than most girls because I’m inclined to be independent, and men resent that. A lot of girls make a habit of saying ‘no’ in such a way they make the man like it. When I say ‘no,’ I say ‘NO.’ I don’t give a hang whether he likes it or doesn’t like it.

Sometimes you’re on top and things are easy. Sometimes you’re on the bottom. There’s no need to let it worry you.

Be like the clam,” Mason said. “At high tide?” “What’s the difference?” he asked. “You gather clams at low tide.” “Right,” Mason said. “Be like a clam at high tide.

Charity may begin at home, but it ends up in the poorhouse.

I suppose I could have used the same amount of mental effort in some commercial activity and made money. I work like the devil thinking up wisecracks, games, stunts, and how to drink a lot without getting too awfully drunk. If you’ve never tried it, eating a lot of butter before the drinking starts is a swell stunt.” “I have a recipe which beats that,” Mason said. “You have?” “Yes.” “Be a good sport and give it to me. That butter stunt is the best I’ve ever found.” Mason said, “Mine is more simple. I don’t drink much after the drinking starts.

He can’t get along without having someone pat him on the back and tell him he’s doing all right, that he’s a wonderful young man, and all that stuff.

I’m listening. I listen with my ears and look with my eyes. I can’t do two things at once and really concentrate on them. Right now, I’m listening to your voice.

People really should cultivate the art of talking to themselves. They’d learn a lot about voices if they did.

I didn’t ask for much money, Mr. Mason, only enough to get by on. I figured that the world owed me a living.

was always trying to improve the appearance of the package, because he knew that the goods inside were rotten.

How does everybody in Hollywood work?" Drake asked. "By fits and starts.

Talk is cheap. But, it’s the only coin he’s got with which to pay anyone anything. He hypnotizes himself into believing that he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. But he hasn’t got guts enough to go out and do it. He doesn’t intend to get a job. He intends to get some more money from you in order to play a ‘sure thing.

He hasn’t got guts enough to go out and do it by hard work. Therefore, he does it with talk and by trying to take short cuts. When things go wrong, he feels sorry for himself and wants someone to listen to his tale of woe. When he has a little spurt of good fortune, he patronizes all of his friends and starts to strut. Then the next time he gets a body blow, he caves in and crawls all over the place, trying to put his head in your lap and sob out his troubles, while you run your fingers through his hair, tell him you’ll protect him and that it will be all right.

he’ll have to cut out all of his gambling associations. He’ll have to tell the court who got this money and what was done with it. He’ll have to quit acting the part of a spoiled kid with an indulgent sister, and learn to stand on his own two feet, and it may make a man of him.

hit her where she least expects to be hit. There’s only one way to fight, and that’s to win. Never attack where the other man is expecting it, when the other man is expecting it. That’s where he’s prepared his strongest defense.

things which seem frightfully important at the time have a habit of fading into insignificance. Events are like telephone poles, streaming back past the observation platform of a speeding train. They loom large at first, then melt into the distance, becoming so tiny they finally disappear altogether…. That’s the way with nearly all of the things we think are so vital.

He looks on an education only as a magic formula, which should enable him to go through life without work.

I’m a librarian,” she said, “employed in the San Molinas library. For various reasons, I have never married. My position gives me at once an opportunity to cultivate a taste for the best in literature, and to learn something of character. I have nothing in common with the younger set who find alcoholic stimulation the necessary prerequisite to any attempt at conversation or enjoyment.

The house fairly oozed prosperity, a house which had been designed not only to be lived in but to be looked at. It had been built and decorated by a showman and for showmen.

A man does his best work when those around him are asleep.

There's a lot of telepathy, not individual telepathy so much as group telepathy, mind beating on mind, chaining you into a convention of business humdrum.

And I have thrown you out of the mood for further work?" Mason asked. "Not out of the mood for work. Out of sympathy with the script. Here are characters facing a dramatic moment in their lives. You can't put anything like that across on the screen unless the characters are real. You can't tell whether they are real unless you sympathize with them, unless you open a door and walk right into their lives. That is a subjective thought, intuition, telepathy, auto-hypnotism. Call it whatever you want to.

Once a man forms an opinion, he starts interpreting facts in the light of that belief. He ceases to be an impartial judge of facts.

he did not believe in philanthropy, thinking that the ultimate purpose of life was to develop character; that the more a person came to depend on outside assistance, the more his character was weakened.

the money was to go only to those who had been incapacitated in life’s battles: the crippled, the aged, the infirm. To those who could still struggle on, Sabin offered nothing. The privilege of struggling for achievement was the privilege of living, and to take away that right to struggle was equivalent to taking away life itself.

My mother was a wonderful woman. She had a loyalty which was unsurpassed, and a complete lack of nervousness. During all her married life, there was literally never an unkind word spoken, simply because she never allowed herself to develop any of those emotional reflexes, which so frequently make people want to bicker with those whom they love, or with whom they come in constant association.

The department has its own ideas of what constitutes justice. If we could uncover some evidence which would bolster the D.A's case, that would be justice. If we uncovered some evidence that wouldn't ... well, you know how it is.

I value your good opinion.” “Don’t ever try to value something you don’t have,

Okay,” Drake said, “I’ll get my man on the job and have him up there. Anything else?” “That’s all for now,” Mason said. “Well, wait a minute! This rancher, Overbrook, looks like a big, good-natured, rugged individual, but I’d like to find out something about him.

Within reasonable limits, we gals all look alike nowadays, except for details.

Could I look at the car?” Mason asked. “Got anything for me to look at?

The courtroom atmosphere was stale with that psychic stench which comes from packed humans whose emotions are roused to a high pitch of excitement.

You see, amnesia is usually the result of mental unbalance. It’s an attempt on the part of the mind to escape from something that the mind either can’t cope with or doesn’t want to cope with. It’s a refuge. It’s the means a man uses to close the door of his mind on something that may lead to insanity.

a man who was tall in a gangling, loose-jointed way, with a static, vacuous grin seeming to betoken a continuous attempt to placate and mollify a world which somehow kept him on the defensive.

Virtually every man has enemies. Sometimes they’re business enemies. More often they’re personal enemies, people who hate him, people who will look down their noses and say it’s too bad when they hear he’s bumped off, but who will be tickled to death just the same; but it takes a peculiar psychological build-up to perpetrate a murder. A man must have a certain innate ferocity, a certain lack of consideration, and, usually, a lack of imagination.” “Why a lack of imagination?” “I don’t know,” he said, “except that it’s nearly always true. I think imaginative people sympathize with the sufferings of others because they’re able to visualize those sufferings more keenly in their own minds. An unimaginative person, on the other hand, can’t visualize himself in the shoes of another. Therefore, he sees life only from his own selfish angle. Killers are frequently cunning, but they’re rarely original. They’re selfish, and usually determined. Of course, I’m not talking now about a murder which is the result of some sudden overpowering emotion.

Abruptly, she settled down against his shoulder with a little wriggling motion. “I’m getting my wires crossed,” she admitted. “In order to get anywhere in this world, a woman is supposed to be feminine and leave the thinking to the males. They like it better that way.

a colorless chap who’s never found himself because there isn’t anything to find.

frequent spells of “ailing,” during which there seemed to be nothing particularly wrong save a psychic maladjustment seeking a physical manifestation.

The checkerboarded fields of the Imperial Valley were refreshingly green with irrigated crops. Then the highline canal stretched like a huge snake below the plane and immediately the desert took over. It was as abrupt as that. Below the highline canal irrigation had turned the desert into a rich, fertile area. On the other side of the canal there was nothing but sand and a long straight ribbon of paved highway.

A few hundred feet below the car, jumping from foam-flecked rocks to dark, cool pools, a mountain stream churned over boulders, laughed back the sunlight in sparkling reflections, filled the canyon with the sound of tumbling water.

The only reason Hastings wasn’t happy was because he wasn’t happy.

His spare frame seemed somewhat bowed under the weight of the ponderous dignity which it carried about.

Lots of lawyers don't like circumstantial evidence. I do. I've never had any quarrel with the evidence of circumstances. My quarrel is with the habit of giving events the obvious, careless interpretation. I dislike sloppy thinking.

I'm not naturally tough. I've learned to be tough through rubbing elbows with the police.

that back of this wall was a vast yearning, a loneliness of soul which craved companionships the personality repelled.

fuzzy hair that bristled out on each side above the ears,

He’s a guy with a one-track mind. When he starts for one objective he can’t think of anything else.

The voice was suave, pleasant, well modulated and expressive. The restless eyes were so black that it was hard to detect expression in them, but his voice more than made up for it. Here was no man who talked in a conversational monotone, but one whose every word seemed alive with expression. His motions as he moved about straightening up the room were graceful, well-timed and effective.

Marriage is a working relationship. It has its moments of genuine, downright boredom. That’s the trouble with Daphne. She can’t stand being bored. She has to be in love—madly in love, and it’s difficult to be madly in love with a husband three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.

I don’t want to see people as other people see them, I want to see them as I see them.

The passing of years had made him indifferent to feminine beauty, and long association with the police had utterly calloused him to human misery. His manner indicated that he had detached himself from the scene of which he was a part. His body hulked between the prisoners and the door, which constituted a discharge of his duty. His mind was far away, occupied with the mathematical percentages of his prospects for winning on the races the next afternoon; daydreaming what he would do when he became eligible for pension; and rehashing in his mind an argument he had had with his wife that morning, thinking somewhat ruefully of her natural aptitude for delivering an extemporaneous tongue lashing, whereas he hadn’t thought of his best retorts until long afterward. His wife had a gift that way. No, damn it, she’d inherited it from her mother—that must be it. He remembered some of the scenes with his mother-in-law before she’d died some ten years ago. At that time, Mabel had been all worked up over the way the old lady used to have tantrums. That was before Mabel had got fat. She certainly had a good figure in those days. Well, come to think of it, he’d put on a little weight himself.

Loftus clenched his right fist, extended it in front of him, and gently lowered it to the desk. There was something more impressive in the gesture than would have been the case had he banged the top of the desk with explosive violence. “I don’t like criminal lawyers,” he said. “Neither do I,” Mason admitted, seating himself in what appeared to be the most comfortable chair in the office. “But you’re a criminal lawyer.” “It depends upon what you mean,” Mason observed. “I’m a lawyer. I’m not a criminal.” “You defend criminals.” “What is your definition of a criminal?” Mason asked. “A man who has committed a crime.” “And who decides that he has committed a crime?” “Why, a jury, I suppose.” “Exactly,” Mason said, with a smile. “So far, I have been very fortunate in having juries agree with me that the persons I represented were not criminals.” Loftus said, “That isn’t conclusive.” “Judges think it is,” Mason said, still smiling.

the

please,

I’m not a lawyer,” Mason grinned, “except as a sideline. I’m an adventurer.

His face didn’t change expression, but his eyes glinted. “That’s one of the chances I have to take,” he told her. “I can’t expect my clients to be loyal to me. They pay me money. That’s all.” She stared at him with a speculative look that held something of a wistful tenderness. “But you insist on being loyal to your clients, no matter how rotten they are.” “Of course,” he told her. “That’s my duty.” “To your profession?” “No,” he said slowly, “to myself. I’m a paid gladiator. I fight for my clients. Most clients aren’t square shooters. That’s why they’re clients. They’ve got themselves into trouble. It’s up to me to get them out. I have to shoot square with them. I can’t always expect them to shoot square with me.

A lawyer,” said Perry Mason slowly, “who wouldn’t skate on thin ice for a client ain’t worth a damn.