The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.
I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.
Courage is a strange thing: One can never be sure of it
I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.
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 like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
To say goodbye is to die a little.
I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
The streets were dark with something more then night.
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.
Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men.
You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
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.
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