Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

"The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut. I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it."

"He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country."

"So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer."Me? How"The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read."Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them."She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at."That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops."Oh, nuts."

"Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness."

"Tall, aren't you" she said. "I didn't mean to be."Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her."

"It's goddamned funny in this police racket how an old woman can look out of a window and see a guy running and pick him out of a line-up six months later, but we can show hotel help a clear photo and they just can't be sure.''That's one of the qualifications for good hotel help,' I said."

"I didn't mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a family. Not much: a few books, pictures, radio, chessmen, old letters, stuff like that. Nothing. Such as they were, they had all my memories."

"Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U. S. A. We just don't run our country that way."

"You're broke, eh"I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate."

"I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble."

"It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it."

"Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead."

"I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings."