California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again.
An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before. Light
All right, you. Stand straight. Pull your belly in. Pull your chin in. Keep your shoulders back. Hold your head level. Look straight front. Turn left. Turn right. Face front again and hold your hands...
A white night for me is as rare as a fat postman. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Howard Spencer at the Ritz-Beverly I would have killed a bottle and knocked myself out. And the next time I saw a polite cha...
A man like you who is supposed to know his way around. 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 ans...
A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.
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
Spring rustling in the air, like a paper bag blowing along a concrete sidewalk.
In a voice with half the steps missing.
You go in through double swing doors. Inside the double doors there is a combination PBX and information desk at which sits one of those ageless women you see around municipal offices everywhere in th...
Writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction.
Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.
They just sat there looking back at me. The orange queen was clacking her typewriter. Cop talk was no more treat for her than legs to a dance director. They had the calm weathered faces of healthy men...
There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop.
The place was horrible by daylight. The Chinese junk on the walls, the rug, the fussy lamp, the teakwood stuff, the sticky riot of colors, the totem pole, the flagon of ether and laudanum - all this i...
The next hour was three hours long
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...
Tengo una guerra en marcha con la Warner. Tengo una guerra en marcha con el jardinero. Tengo una guerra en marcha con un hombre que vino a arreglar el tocadiscos y arruinó dos discos LP. Tengo varias...
She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.