The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

by Raymond Chandler

“I’m only an amateur psychologist, Mrs. Wade. A man in my racket has to be a little of that. I’d say it’s more likely he has fallen out of love with the kind of stuff he writes.”

I drove back to Hollywood feeling like a short length of chewed string. It was too early to eat, and too hot. I turned on the fan in my office. It didn’t make the air any cooler, just a little more lively. Outside on the boulevard the traffic brawled endlessly. Inside my head thoughts stuck together like flies on flypaper.

An hour crawled by like a sick cockroach. I was a grain of sand on the desert of oblivion. I was a two-gun cowpoke fresh out of bullets. Three shots, three misses. I hate it when they come in threes.

I have such a beautiful love for myself—and the sweet part of it—no rivals.

What a magician is the subconscious. If only it would work regular hours.

We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”

We don’t have mobs and crime syndicates and goon squads because we have crooked politicians and their stooges in the City Hall and the legislatures. Crime isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom. Cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumor, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack. We’re a big rough rich wild people and crime is the price we pay for it, and organized crime is the price we pay for organization. We’ll have it with us a long time. Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.”