Playback (Philip Marlowe, #7)

by Raymond Chandler

the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.

He was about six feet one, slender, with a thin conceited face and too many teeth.

“For fifty bucks a day I don’t get shot. That costs seventy-five.”

I reached a mirror and looked at the face. It seemed familiar.

Mr. Clark Brandon seemed to be the sort of man who got what he wanted without raising his voice.

What are you doing tonight? And don’t tell me you’re going out with four sailors again.”

“I’ve got friends who could cut you down so small you’d need a stepladder to put your shoes on.”

He was a dapper man, very carefully dressed, too short in the legs, too long in the nose, too sparse in the hair.

“One of the choice things about this town is that the people who work here can’t afford to live here.”

He wore glasses, had a skin the color of cold oatmeal and hollow tired eyes.

His voice was thin and dry and rustled like bamboo leaves.

I even spent a year at Uppsala. I cannot clearly remember why.

There is always some rich and lonely female in a luxury hotel. She may not be beautiful or very young, but she has other charms.

There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium.

The silence fell like a bag of feathers.

You’re a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.”

Once in every two or three days I have to sit down.