It’s so hard for women – even nice women – to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.
It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out.
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
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 hung up and fed myself a slug of Old Forester to brace my nerves for the interview.
I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swat...
I dreamed I was far down in the depths of icy green water with a corpse under my arm. The corpse had long blond hair that kept floating around in front of my face. An enormous fish with bulging eyes a...
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.
He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the hea...
Don't be a hero, young man. There's no percentage in it.
Do you like orchids?’ ‘Not particularly,’ I said. The General half closed his eyes. ‘They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the rotten sweetness of...
As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.
Anybody ever tell you you’re a cute little trick?
American girls are terrific. American wives take too damn much territory.
He breathed like an old Ford with a leaky head gasket.
You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastin...
You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime. (I'll Be Waiting)
You can live a long time in Hollywood and never see the part they use in pictures...
Well, all he did was kill a Negro, I said. I guess that’s only a misdemeanor.