She went out slowly. The way she did it hadn’t been learned at business college.
She had weedy hair of that vague colour which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn't enough life in it to be ginger, and isn't clean enough to be grey.
She didn’t look hard, but she looked as if she had heard all the answers and remembered the ones she thought she might be able to use sometime.
Police business, he said almost gently, is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we...
One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see? Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. Did he say ‘whom’? Yeah, but don’t hit him, I said. There is such a word. Degarmo licked his lips....
Ohls showed the motor-cycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night’s hard rain hadn’t even dented.
Maybe you don't like tall girls with honey-colored hair and skin like the first strawberry peach the grocer sneaks out of the box for himself.If you don't, I'm sorry for you. (Pearls Are A Nuisance)
I’m a weak character, without guts or ambition. I caught the brass ring and it shocked me to find out it wasn’t gold. A guy like me has one big moment in his life, one perfect swing on the high trapez...
I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I...
I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.
I needed a drink and was in a hurry to get one. I
I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of black shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared a...
I got down there about nine, under a hard high October moon that lost itself in the top layers of a beach fog.
I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of cor...
He looked up rather sadly. So would I. So would we all. But show business has always been like that—any kind of show business. If these people didn’t live intense and rather disordered lives, if their...
He leaned his back against the workbench and looked me over without haste, without interest, as if he was looking at a slab of cold meat. Perhaps he thought of people that way.
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.
Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you s...