Mostly I just kill time,” he said, “and it dies hard.
I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.
She was thinking. i could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother for her.
Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.
It’s so hard for women – even nice women – to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.
He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway.
Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a domed brown forehead that might at careless glance seemed a dwelling place for brains.
She’d make for a jazzy week-end, but she’d be wearing for a steady diet.
It’s a swell theory,” I said. “Marriott socked me, took the money, then he got sorry and beat his brains out, after first burying the money under a bush.
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.
Her eyes ate me.
A slice of spumoni wouldn’t have melted on her now.
The latter think the shortest distance between two points is from a blonde to a bed.
Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten – when Larry Cobb was sober.
His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.
I was as empty of life as a scarecrow’s pockets.
I wasn’t doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot dangling.
She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all.
Her teeth had the nice shiny look that comes from standing all night in a glass of solution.
He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket.