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His face now had a little color and the eyes were not so far back in his head that you had to grope for them.
A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world.
“Hard little men in hard little offices talking hard little words that don’t mean a goddam thing.
He was like somebody you meet on board ship and get to know very well and never really know at all.
He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.
Even in my business you occasionally get a satisfied customer.
She opened a mouth like a firebucket and laughed.
“Who was it said that beyond a certain point all dangers are equal?”
There are one hundred and ninety ways of being a bastard and Carne knew all of them.
She had an iron smile and eyes that could count the money in your hip wallet.
An hour crawled by like a sick cockroach.
It’s as English as boiled fish with that awful anchovy sauce that looks as if the cook had bled into it.
People with enough money, Mr. Marlowe, can always protect themselves.”
In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.
It was the same old cocktail party, everybody talking too loud, nobody listening,
She had a glass in her hand but it didn’t look as if it was more than a prop.
All writers are punks and I am one of the punkest.
He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung.
The house was leaking guests out into the evening air now.
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.
One would think a writer would be happy here—if a writer is ever happy anywhere.”
That’s the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capital.
I had the kind of luck you only get when you don’t care.
If a well man prays, that’s faith. A sick man prays and he is just scared.
I have such a beautiful love for myself—and the sweet part of it—no rivals.
The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money.
A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue.
The power of money becomes very difficult to control.
Don’t be a hero, young man. There’s no percentage in it.”
He had a grip like a pipe wrench.
To drown in a golden flood—that’s not so bad.
His heels hammered down the corridor.
He sounded as if he was talking through the slit in an armored car.
A writer needs stimulation—and not the kind they bottle. There’s nothing around here but one great big suntanned hangover.
there are the killers who are in love with death, to whom murder is a remote kind of suicide.
I felt like a halfdigested meal eaten in a greasy-spoon joint.
Cops never say goodbye. They’re always hoping to see you again in the line-up.
“I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don’t want it any more.”
It was a dirty job and it had to be done dirty.
The big racket money comes in like water from the pipe in your bathroom, a steady stream that never stops flowing.
“I’m an old tired beat-up cop. All I feel is sore.”
“There aren’t any safe places.”
To say goodbye is to die a little.
He was the kind of guy who always wants to do the right thing but somehow winds up doing something else.
You’ve got nice clothes and perfume and you’re as elegant as a fifty-dollar whore.”
