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Quotes from The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler

1888–1959 England

← All quotes by Raymond Chandler

14 quotes

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

The Big Sleep (1939)

A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.

The Big Sleep (1939)

The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.

The Big Sleep (1939)

"A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy."

The Big Sleep (1939)

It's so hard for women—even nice women—to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.

The Big Sleep (1939)

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 (1939)

The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.

The Big Sleep (1939)

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.

The Big Sleep (1939)

I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.

The Big Sleep (1939)

"You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."

The Big Sleep (1939)

Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.

The Big Sleep (1939)

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.

The Big Sleep (1939)

She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.

The Big Sleep (1939)

I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from.Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.

The Big Sleep (1939)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Raymond Chandler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.