The kid said: I don’t like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don’t like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don’t like them in the first place.
The customer was middle-aged, handsomely dressed, and drunk. He wanted to talk and he couldn’t have stopped even if he hadn’t really wanted to talk. He was polite and friendly and when I heard him he...
Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon's tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
On a dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.
No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective.
My God, you big dark handsome brute! I ought to throw a Buick at you.
Maybe I was tired and irritable. Maybe I felt a little guilty. I could learn to hate this guy without even knowing him. I could just look at him across the width of a cafeteria and want to kick his te...
Lucille has a dull life, Mr. Marlowe. She's stuck here with me and a PBX. And an itty-bitty diamond ring - so small I was ashamed to give it to her. But what can a man do? If he loves a girl, he'd lik...
Lois Magic was not listed in the phone book.
It was twenty-five minutes past nine when he got to the corner of Seventh and Spring, where the Metropole was. It was an old hotel that had once been exclusive and was now steering a shaky course betw...
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man...
I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between the stars.
I stopped thinking. Lights moved behind my closed lids. I was lost in space. I was a gilt-edged sap come back from a vain adventure. I was a hundred dollar package of dynamite that went off with a noi...
I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, a...
I lit a cigarette and dragged a smoking stand beside the chair. The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips. I looked the place over. You can't tell anything about an outfit like t...
I don't like your manner, Kingsley said in a voice you could have crack a Brazil nut on.That's all right, I said. I'm not selling it.
His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.