“I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939)
Quotes from book
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles.
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 3
Context: Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners."
"I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
“Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28
Context: I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28, Phillip Marlowe watching Mona "Silver-Wig" Mars
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 6
“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it.”
opening paragraph, chapter 1
The Big Sleep (1939)
Context: It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 25
“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 6
Context: The registration read: Carmen Sternwood, 3765 Alta Brea Crescent, West Hollywood. I went back to my car again and sat and sat. The top dripped on my knees and my stomach burned from the whiskey. No more cars came up the hill. No lights went on in the house before which I was parked. It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”
Source: The Big Sleep
“The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2
“You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28
