Only to Sleep Quotes

“There was, I thought, something calling to me from out in the dark.
It came from out in the tempest, even from the lights of the fishing boats a mile out at sea. You can be called to a last effort, a final heroic statement, because I doubt you call yourself to leave comforts and certainties for an open road. But the call is inside your own head. It's a sad summons from the depths of your own wasted past. You could call it the imperative to go out with full-tilt trumpets and gunshots instead of the quietly desperate sound of the hospital ventilator. Victory instead of defeat.”
― Lawrence Osborne, Only to Sleep

“This was Donald’s secret extramarital world. These little dance floors with available women swinging themselves to cumbia, to El Tropicombo tunes, drinks with paper parasols and maraschinos, smoke from other lungs. Nights in town and on the high seas with the Wild Bunch. I was beginning to become better acquainted”
― Lawrence Osborne, Only to Sleep

“I stepped forward to announce my name, my hopeless mission: Philip Marlowe, so recently uplifted from retirement. I flinched as her eyes took me in, and something took me aback. The eyes were not closed against me, they were open and inquisitive—but not too much so. She had the level interest in something new that a leopard has. While it decides whether you can be killed or not, its eyes are remarkably gentle and serene.”
― Lawrence Osborne, Only to Sleep

“He was old but full of beans,”
― Lawrence Osborne, Only to Sleep