You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.

You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.

You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jail house. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.

And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.