Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Javonen smiled – very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile.
Ich blickte den Revolver an, und der Revolver blickte mich an.
The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel, but I didn’t move. Not being bullet proof is an idea I had had to get used to.
A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.
I didn’t ask to see you. You sent for me. I don’t mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.
Rain filled the gutters and splashed knee-high off the sidewalk. Big cops in slickers that shone like gun barrels had a lot of fun carrying giggling girls across the bad places. The rain drummed hard on the roof of the car and the burbank top began to leak. A pool of water formed on the floorboards for me to keep my feet in. It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain.
I got back on the runway and took all of it and some of the hedge and gave the front door the heavy shoulder. This was foolish. About the only part of a California house you can’t put your foot through is the front door. All it did was hurt my shoulder and make me mad.
Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money.
The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don’t play at it.
I used to like mine with champagne. The champagne as cold as Valley Forge and about a third of a glass of brandy beneath it.
If I had a razor, I’d cut your throat – just to see what ran out of it.
Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else’s rain.
I’m a very smart guy. I haven’t a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals. I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you’ll think of me, I’ll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up.
You lied to him and you drank your cyanide like a little gentleman. You died like a poisoned rat, Harry, but you’re no rat to me.
There are one hundred and ninety ways of being a bastard and Carne knew all of them.
He had a heart as big as one of Mae West’s hips.
The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he’d kicked his grandmother.
I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.
If God were omnipresent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn’t have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium.
I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.