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.
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.
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 like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends. I don't mean the ones that hang on forever. There aren't any of those.
The streets were dark with something more then night.
I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
The challenge is to write about real things magically.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.
He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on the circulation and you know what circulation depends on.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
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.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.
She had eyes like strange sins.
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.
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