There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.

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

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

A really good detective never gets married.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.

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.