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My kind of pride is different. It’s the pride of a man who has nothing else. I’m sorry if I annoy you.’
A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.’
‘Alcohol is like love,’ he said. ‘The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.’
I’m a weak character, without guts or ambition. I caught the brass ring and it shocked me to find out it wasn’t gold. A guy like me has one big moment in his life, one perfect swing on the high trapeze. Then he spends the rest of his time trying not to fall off the sidewalk into the gutter.’
Tijuana is not Mexico. No border town is anything but a border town, just as no waterfront is anything but a waterfront.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life.
The life in a jail is in suspension, without purpose or meaning.
It is always the little things that make you sore.
‘You’re a piker, Marlowe. You’re a peanut grifter. You’re so little it takes a magnifying glass to see you.’
‘In my book you’re a nickel’s worth of nothing.’
They say lust makes a man old, but keeps a woman young. They say a lot of nonsense. They say the rich can always protect themselves and that in their world it is always summer. I’ve lived with them and they are bored and lonely people.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
He was polite and friendly and when I heard him he didn’t seem to slur his words much, but you knew that he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you it would not be the truth. At the very best a distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world.
he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you it would not be the truth. At the very best a distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world.
But the only salvation for a writer is to write. If there is anything good in him, it will come out.’
the only salvation for a writer is to write. If there is anything good in him, it will come out.’
He had been a man it was impossible to dislike. How many do you meet in a lifetime that you can say that about?
I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it.
Every cocktail party is the same, even the dialogue.
A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. 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.
as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
That’s the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capital. Sometimes I think it’s the only difference.’
We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.’
Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It’s the system.
The wise guy never fools anybody but himself.
Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there’s such a thing as law. We’re up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers. How long do you think the big-shot mobsters would last if the lawyers didn’t show them how to operate?’
That was a dream girl. Some of her was here and now, but a lot of her was there and then.
The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean.
Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.
That’s the frustrating part of newspaper work. You always know so many things you can’t use.
It’s no disgrace to have money and no disgrace to marry it.
To say good-bye is to die a little.
An act is all there is. There isn’t anything else. In here’—he tapped his chest with the lighter—‘there isn’t anything.
