زمان همه چیز را پست و فاسد و چروکیده می‌کند. تراژدی زندگی این نیست که چیزهای زیبا جوان می‌میرند، بلکه این است که زندگی آن‌ها را پیر و خوار می‌کند. - Raymond Chandler

Then she laughed. It was almost a racking laugh. It shook her as the wind shakes a tree. I thought there was puzzlement in it, not exactly surprise, but as if a new idea had been added to something already known and it didn't fit. Then I thought that was too much to get out of a laugh.

A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.