A hard-boiled redhead sang a hard-boiled song in a voice that could have been used to split firewood (Guns at Cyrano's)
A dark woman with a sharp nose opened her mouth to yell and no sound came from her. There was the instant when nobody makes a sound, when it almost seems as if there will never again be any sound—afte...
A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.
The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how...
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.
Платих и се отбих в един бар, за да изсипя чашка коняк върху нюйоркската пържола. Защо ли и викаха нюйоркска? Доколкото си спомням стоманените плоскости се произвеждат в Детройт. Излязох да вдъхна мал...
The daily papers were beginning to scream about how terrible it would be if you didn’t get your Christmas shopping done early. It would be terrible anyway; it always is. It
You’re a full portion of what I don’t like,’ she said. ‘Get out of my way.’ I didn’t move. She didn’t move. We were both sitting down – and not even close to each other.
You like it in jail?It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?
You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leavin...
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things lik...
Tiré el diario a un rincón y encendí la TV. Después de la nauseabunda página de sociales, hasta los luchadores que aparecían en la pantalla parecían buenos. Lo cual probablemente era cierto. Sobre tod...
This was more like it, a narrowed cluttered little shop stacked with books from floor to ceiling and four or five browsers taking their time- putting thumb marks on the new jackets. Nobody paid any at...
They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don’t have to please anybody. They are safe. They
Then she laughed. It was almost a racking laugh. It shook her as the wind shakes a tree. I thought there was puzzlement in it, not exactly surprise, but as if a new idea had been added to something al...
The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.
The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store...
The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be...
The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.