Playback

by Raymond Chandler

I’m old, tired and full of no coffee.

A three-piece Mexican band was making the kind of music a Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They always sing the same song, and it always has nice open vowels and a drawn out sugary lilt, and the guy who sings it always strums on a guitar and has a lot to say about amor, mi corazón, a lady who is “linda” but very hard to convince, and he always has too long and too oily hair and when he isn’t making with the love stuff he looks as if his knife work in an alley would be efficient and economical.

He looked like a nice guy if you didn’t crowd him. At that distance and in that light I couldn’t tell much more, except that if you did crowd him, you had better be big, fast, tough and in top condition.

Way too fun

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

Burn

A woman’s body is not so sacred that it can’t be used—especially when she has already failed at love.”

:-(

“I’m part Chinese, part Hawaiian, part Filipino, and part nigger. You’d hate to be me.”

Likely

He had two expressions—hard and harder.

“Military Intelligence is an expression which contains an interior fallacy.

Excellent

The silence fell like a bag of feathers.

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