Quotes 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. 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

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