“ 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
