Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man....
You're not human tonight, Marlowe.
I'm part Chinese, part Hawaiian, part Filipino, and part nigger. You'd hate to be me
I went back to my car again and sat and sat. The top dripped on my knees and my stomach burned from the whiskey. No more cars came up the hill. No lights went on in the house before which I was parked...
Hammett wrote at first (and almost to the end) for people with a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there. Violence did not dismay them; i...
When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the b...
If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.
I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
I like games of chance, including women.
I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie i...
Mostly I just kill time, he said, and it dies hard.
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it suc...
Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail...
Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part...
Javonen smiled - very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile.
If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive. I
I looked at my watch. Nine fifty-four. Time to go home and get your slippers on and play over a game of chess. Time for a tall cool drink and a long quiet pipe. Time to sit with your feet up and think...