We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." —

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.

She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.

All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and if it does not it dies and is forgotten.

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

Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.

He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.