1 | “The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”
* - The Long Goodbye
2 | “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”*
- The High Window
3 | “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts”
– The Big Sleep
4 | “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
- Farewell, My Lovely
5 | “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket”
- Farewell, My Lovely
6 | “I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
- Philip Marlowe’s Guide To Life
7 | “Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”*
- The Big Sleep
8 | “Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”
(Interview)
9 | “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.”*
- The Big Sleep
10 | “It could have been a beautiful friendship,” Beifus said with a sigh. “Except for the ice pick, of course.”
– The Little Sister
11 | “Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.”*
- Trouble Is My Business
12 | “She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”
- The Little Sister
13 | “I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn’t need a gun, you’d better take one along that worked.”
- The Long Goodbye
14 | “It got dark and the rain-clouded lights of the stores were soaked up by the black street.”
- The Big Sleep