She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. - Raymond Chandler

"If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat - just to see what ran out of it."

"Caterpillar blood," I said.

I have a bad habit of starting a book and reading just far enough to make sure I want to read it and look forward to reading and then putting it to one side while I break the ice on a couple more. In that way, when I feel dull and depressed which is too often, I know I have something to read late at night when I do most of it and not that horrid blank feeling of not having anybody to talk to or listen to.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.