I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee.
I like games of chance, including women.
Her voice was as dead as the summer before last. (Nevada Gas)
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...
The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom.
Pero siempre me gustan los libros equivocados. Y las películas equivocadas. Y la gente equivocada.
Javonen smiled - very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile.
Then Malloy took the gun away from whoever did it.
The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut.I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like...
Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?It takes about three years.Three years? He looked shocked. Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a...
His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in. (Guns at Cyrano's)
Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead.
One day, everything will be like before again. And it is not like it.
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 the tricks and has nothing to say.
You're not human tonight, Marlowe.
You mean something happened to him? Her voice faded off into sort of a sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment.
There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.
The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night-to see that the guests didn't bring the...
She’s a nice girl. Not my type. You don’t like them nice? He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand. I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded wi...
She’d make a jazzy weekend, but she’d be wearing for a steady diet.