“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“Time passed again. I don't know how long. I had no watch. They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at the politicians but there are a lot of nice people in the world just the same.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“It's a swell theory," I said. "Marriott socked me, took the money, then he got sorry and beat his brains out, after first burying the money under a bush.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“Velma you says? No Velma heah, brother. No hooch, no gals, no nothing. Jes' the scram, white boy, jes' the scram.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I think you are a very stupid person. You look stupid. You are in a stupid business. And you came here on a stupid mission.” “I get it,” I said. “I’m stupid. It sank in after a while.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“She sighed. “All men are the same.” “So are all women—after the first nine.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I was a swell guy. I enjoyed being me.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o’-shanter which wasn’t any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.
I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:
“You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective?”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“Kind of smart guesser, ain’t you, young man? Can’t wait for folks to get their mouth open hardly.” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Morrison. This is an important matter to us—” “This here young man don’t seem to have no trouble keepin’ his mouth in place.” “He’s married,” I said. “He’s had practice.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I did it for you. I took in a pint of bourbon with me. She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tire, rim and all.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of black shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared at it. Marriott saw me staring at it. “An interesting bit,” he said negligently. “I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial’s Spirit of Dawn.” “I thought it was Klopstein’s Two Warts on a Fanny,” I said. Mr. Lindsay Marriott’s face looked as if he had swallowed a bee. He smoothed it out with an effort.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“He was a windblown blossom of some two hundred pounds with freckled teeth and the mellow voice of a circus barker. He was tough, fast and he ate red meat. Nobody could push him around. He was the kind of cop who spits on his blackjack every night instead of saying his prayers. But he had humorous eyes.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tire, rim and all.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“She was a cute as a washtub.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from Farewell, My Lovely
“I 'ad a toy when I was little,' said Suzy. She frowned for a moment, then added, 'Can't remember what it was. It moved and made me laugh...”
― Garth Nix, quote from Superior Saturday
“Ma kartsin, et võin langeda provintsuluse lõksu. Tavaliselt seostub mõiste "provintslus" ruumiga. Provintslik on inimene, kelle mõtlemine on piiratud teatava marginaalse ruumiga, millele ta omistab liialdatud, universaalse tähtsuse. T. S. Eliot aga hoiatab teise, mitte ruumilise, vaid ajalise provintsluse eest. "Meie ajastul" kirjutab ta, "mil inimesed näivad rohkem kui kunagi pidavat teadmist taruseks ja informatsiooni teadmiseks, ning püüavad eluprobleeme lahendada insenerlikult, on takimas uus provintslus, mis võibolla vääriks küll uut nime. See ei ole ruumiline, vaid ajalooline provintslus: vaade, et ajalugu pole muud kui oma otstarbe ära teeninud ja siis kõrvale heidetud inimleiutiste kroonika, vaade, et maailm on ainult elavate päralt ja et surnutel ei ole siin vähimatki osa. Tolle provintsluse oht on, et me kõik, kõik maakera rahvad, võime olla ühtekokku provintslikud; ja ned, kes ei taha provintslikud olla, võivad hakaa ainult eremiitides."
Seega on olemas ruumilised provintslased ja ajalised provintslased. Ruumilistele provintslastele näib iga gloobus, iga maailmakaart, kui sügavale ad on provintslusse on eksinud, kui pimestatud sellest; samuti näitab iga ajalugu, sealhulgas iga lehekülg Herodotusest ajalistele provintslastele, et alati on eksisteerinud olevik, et ajalugu on vaid oleviku katkematu kulg ja kõige kaugemgi möödani oli toona elatud iimestele nende kõige südamelähedasem tänapäev.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, quote from Travels with Herodotus
“So…what are you up to?” she asked.
“I’m looking at a pretty girl.”
Huh? If this were texting, that would definitely earn a WTF reply. “Okaay…”
“She’s blonde, wearing blue and standing with two friends. She’s talking on her phone, probably to some unworthy jerk, but damn, I wish I were him.”
― Cherrie Lynn, quote from Rock Me
“Kerr found that a spinning black hole would not collapse into a pointlike star, as Schwarzschild assumed, but would collapse into a spinning ring. Anyone unfortunate enough to hit the ring would perish; but someone falling into the ring would not die, but would actually fall through. But instead of winding up on the other side of the ring, he or she would pass through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and wind up in another universe. In other words, the spinning black hole is the rim of Alice's Looking Glass.
If he or she were to move around the spinning ring a second time, he or she would enter yet another universe. In fact, repeated entry into the spinning ring would put a person in different parallel universes, much like hitting the "up" button on an elevator. In principle, there could be an infinite number of universes, each stacked on top of each other. "Pass through this magic ring and-presto!-you're in a completely different universe where radius and mass are negative!" Kerr wrote.
There is an important catch, however. Black holes are examples of "nontransversable wormholes"; that is, passing through the event horizon is a one-way trip. Once you pass through the event horizon and the Kerr ring, you cannot go backward through the ring and out through the event horizon.”
― Michio Kaku, quote from Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
“But I figure you're never too old to learn. That's when you become old, when you stop being fascinated by things, when you stop wanting to learn and explore ...”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from You're The One That I Don't Want
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.