“ I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. Raymond Chandler
“ I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors Raymond Chandler
“ I said: ‘All right, talk, but do you mind putting the gun away? My wife doesn't care, but I'm pregnant. Dashiell Hammett
“ The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theater. The theater had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began r… Ed McBain
“ I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been… Raymond Chandler
“ I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy. Haruki Murakami
“ And there are still a number of people around who say that Hammett didn't write detective stories at all-merely hard-boiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in lik… Raymond Chandler
“ Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far mor… Haruki Murakami
“ She knew how much I needed her. And now she was teasing, playing games. I looked at her and watched her turn into a sex symbol in front of my eyes. She did not look sweet and virginal and lovely anymo… Lawrence Block
“ Walter Kaylin was great! He was outrageous, he just carried it off. He’d have this one guy killing a thousand other guys. Then they beat him into the ground, you think he’s dead, but he rises up again… Mario Puzo
“ She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked… Raymond Chandler
“ They went along a balcony that looked down over the dining room and the dance floor. The lisp of hot jazz came up to them from the lithe, swaying bodies of a high-yaller band. With the lisp of jazz ca… Raymond Chandler
“ There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights… Raymond Chandler
“ ...they were no more than steaks served up to portly politicians who controlled the personnel departments of the TV stations. (Showgirls in Italy) Tobias Jones
“ The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can’t live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far… Daniel Woodrell
“ A quick butchers shows up Old Bill three-handed, also a particularly nasty female grass–-and if looks were acid baths the two she collects from us would reduce her to gristle quicker than Mrs. Durand-… Derek Raymond
“ The pulse of New York City can be found on the bent elbows of the patrons in Pete's Tavern. Mickey Wyte
