He opened the rear door and I got in and sank down into the cushions and George slid under the wheel and started the big car. It moved away from the curb and around the corner with as much noise as a bill makes in a wallet.
He reached for the card without excitement, read it, turned it over and read the back with as much care as the front. There was nothing on the back to read.
Oh sure, I’m her husband. That’s what the record says. I’m the three white steps and the bug green front door and the brass knocker you rap one long and two short and the maid lets you into the hundred-dollar whorehouse.
I suppose you do this to all the clients,” she said softly.
She wore a steel gray business suit and under the jacket a dark blue shirt and a man’s tie of lighter shade. The edges of the folded handkerchief in the breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread.
She was wearing a brown tailor-made and from a strap over her shoulder hung one of those awkward-looking square bags that make you think of a Sister of Mercy taking first aid to the wounded.
There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish.
To say goodbye is to die a little.
The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.
Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool – perhaps – but a fool just the same.
There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.