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The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6) QUOTES

The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6) QUOTES

21 " Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. 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. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

22 " The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even get rich - small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast-iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

23 " There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

24 " I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

25 " I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

26 " There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

27 " I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

28 " Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

29 " One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is ever happy anywhere. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

30 " 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. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

31 " That's the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capital. Sometimes I think it's the only difference. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

32 " A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

33 " And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

34 " He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

35 " That's the trouble with cops. You're all set to hate their guts and then you meet one that goes human on you. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

36 " I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

37 " Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

38 " There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

39 " Maybe I was tired and irritable. Maybe I felt a little guilty. I could learn to hate this guy without even knowing him. I could just look at him across the width of a cafeteria and want to kick his teeth in. "

― Raymond Chandler , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)

40 " 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 , The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)