All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.
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.
California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again.
So I got out my office bottle and took the drink and let my self-respect ride its own race.
Or can I call you Phil?” “Sure.” “You can can me Vivian.” “Thanks, Mrs. Regan.” “Oh, go to hell, Marlowe.
Take it easy, Doc. Around here we only hit our wives in private.
I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you’re not thinking.
This was the time to leave, to go far away. So I pushed the door open and stepped quietly in.
What I like about this place is everything runs so true to type,” I said. “The cop on the gate, the shine on the door, the cigarette and check girls, the fat greasy sensual Jew with the tall stately bored showgirl, the well-dressed, drunk and horribly rude director cursing the barman, the silent guy with the gun, the night club owner with the soft gray hair and the B-picture mannerisms, and now you – the tall dark torcher with the negligent sneer, the husky voice, the hard-boiled vocabulary.
Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains.
A half smart guy,” she said with a tired sniff. “That’s all I ever draw. Never once a guy that’s smart all the way around the course. Never once.