There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican.
I still held his automatic more or less pointed at him, but he swung on me just the same. It caught me flush on the chin. I backstepped fast enough to keep from falling, but I took plenty of the punch...
I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk...
A doorman opened the door for me and I went in. The lobby was not quite as big as the Yankee Stadium. It was floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge rubber underneath. It was so soft it made me wa...
ما توی دوران خودمون شاهد سقوط اعجاب‌آور اخلاقیات عمومی و خصوصی بوده‌ایم. از آدم‌هایی که توی زندگی‌شون کیفیتی نیست نمیشه توقع کیفیت داشت. ما کیفیت نمی‌خواهیم چون باعث میشه جنسی که می‌فروشیم زیادی دوام...
—El alcohol es como el amor —expresó—. El primer beso es magia; el segundo, intimidad; el tercero, rutina. Después de eso lo que hacemos es descestir a la muchacha.
زمان همه چیز را پست و فاسد و چروکیده می‌کند. تراژدی زندگی این نیست که چیزهای زیبا جوان می‌میرند، بلکه این است که زندگی آن‌ها را پیر و خوار می‌کند.
You probably didn’t intend it, but you’ve done me a favor. With an assist from Detective Dayton. You’ve solved a problem for me. No man likes to betray a friend but I wouldn’t betray an enemy into you...
What rattled and thumped was a knotted towel full of melting ice cubes. Somebody who loved me very much had put them on the back of my head. Somebody who loved me less had bashed in the back of my sku...
Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.
Uh-huh. Could be,' I said. It was a spot for a paragraph of lucid prose. Henry Clarendon IV would have obliged. I didn't have a damn thing more to say.
There was a woman. She was rich. She thought she wanted to marry me. It wouldn’t have worked. I’ll probably never see her again. But I remember. Let’s go, she said quietly. And let’s leave the memory...
There is a very simple statement to be made about all these stories: they do not really come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction. They are too contrived, a...
On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer...
Nobody yelled or ran out of the door. Nobody blew a police whistle. Everything was quiet and sunny and calm. No cause for excitement whatever. It's only Marlowe, finding another body. He does it rathe...
Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smell...
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt...
I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.
I went down to the lobby and slipped the catch and then took a shower and put my pajamas on and lay down on the bed. I could have slept for a week. I dragged myself up off the bed again and set the ca...
I walked to the windows and pulled the shades up and opened the windows wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered automobile exhausts and the streets of...