Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He must be the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world.” from Raymond Chandler’s, “The Simple Act of Murder.
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. She was wearing street clothes that looked black and white, and a hat to match and she was a little haughty, but not too much. Whatever you needed, wherever you happened to be – she had it.
One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?” Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. “Did he say ‘whom’?” “Yeah, but don’t hit him,” I said. “There is such a word.” Degarmo licked his lips. “I knew there was,” he said. “I often wondered where they kept it.
She thought. It was nice to watch her thinking. She still had her legs crossed, and still carelessly.
They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.
I drove on through the piled masses of granite and down through the meadows of coarse grass where cows grazed. The same gaudy slacks and short shorts and peasant handkerchiefs as yesterday, the same light breeze and golden sun and clear blue sky, the same smell of pine needles, the same cool softness of a mountain summer. But yesterday was a hundred years ago, something crystallized in time, like a fly in amber.
Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.
Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead.
Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.
On a dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.
Don’t kid yourself. You’re a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.
I guess you can snap her garter any time you want to, without much of a struggle. But there’s one thing you can be sure of – you’re a late comer to the show.
An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before. Light.
Uh-huh. Could be,′ I said. It was a spot for a paragraph of lucid prose. Henry Clarendon IV would have obliged. I didn’t have a damn thing more to say.
You’re a full portion of what I don’t like,’ she said. ‘Get out of my way.’ I didn’t move. She didn’t move. We were both sitting down – and not even close to each other.
You were lucky about that gun. All the people we know have been playing with it, wiping prints off and putting them on. I even put a set on myself just to be fashionable.
She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word.
Do you like orchids?’ ‘Not particularly,’ I said. The General half closed his eyes. ‘They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the rotten sweetness of a prostitute.’ I.
Anybody home, son?” “You ought to know.” “How would I know?” “Go – yourself.” “That’s how people get false teeth.” He showed me his in a tight grin.