He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to...
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watchi...
The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn't have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore....
I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.
Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence...
There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebo...
Breeze looked at me very steadily. Then he sighed. Then he picked the glass up and tasted it and sighed again shook his head sideways with a half smile; the way a man does when you give him a drink an...
I said: Dead end - quiet, restful, like your town. I like a town like this. Marlowe (talking about Olympia) in a short story called Goldfish.
On occasion I read Raymond Chandler although I have certain reservations about this author. Chandler, while obviously a master of his craft, makes overuse of simile, to my annoyance.