I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

~ Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler Hard Boiled Humor Manners Philip Marlowe Put Downs Raymond Chandler

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami End Hard Boiled Wonderland World

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami End Hard Boiled Wonderland World

She's dead. So is your fat pansy. You can be dead, too, if you want.

~ Richard Stark

Richard Stark Crime Fiction Hard Boiled Noir

At the moment developing a nice little inoffensive cancer somewhere on dry land seemed infinitely preferable to what she was grimly convinced was soon to be her death by drowning way too far out at sea.

~ Dana Stabenow

Dana Stabenow Alaska Hard Boiled Mystery Mystery Series

Chance is life's only certainty.

~ Mickey Wyte

Mickey Wyte Hard Boiled Mystery New York City

To catch the bad guys, you've got to think like a bad guy - and that's why all the best detectives have a dark side...

~ David Videcette

David Videcette Based On A True Story Based On Real Events Based On True Stories British British Crime British Crime Author British Detective British Detective Fiction British Detective Thriller British Detectives British Thriller Writers British Thrillers Crime Crime Fiction Crime Fiction Authors Crime Quote Crime Quotes Crime Thriller Detective Detective Fiction Detective Noir Detective Noir Crime Detective Novel Detective Quotes Detective Stories Detective Story Detectives Hard Boiled Hard Boiled Detective London London City Police Police Officer Police Officers True Detective

It was a dark, dismal afternoon, like they all seem to bethese days, when I got this call. I could hear the rainbattering the windowpane of my office when the phone rang.

~ C.s. Woolley

C.s. Woolley Crime Hard Boiled Private Detective Suspense Thriller

A quick butchers shows up Old Bill three-handed, also a particularly nasty female grass–-and if looks were acid baths the two she collects from us would reduce her to gristle quicker than Mrs. Durand-Deacon.

~ Derek Raymond

Derek Raymond Crime English Crime Hard Boiled Noir Patois Slang True Crime

When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no.

~ V.t. Davy

V.t. Davy Arty Channel Crime Detective Hard Boiled Islands Noir Shaw

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can’t live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin’ wide in the turns.

~ Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell Aging Grim Hard Boiled Hard Life Hillbilly Noir Life Sucks Then You Die Louisiana Cajun Proles Swamp Noir

The pulse of New York City can be found on the bent elbows of the patrons in Pete's Tavern.

~ Mickey Wyte

Mickey Wyte Booze Hard Boiled Mystery Novels New York City

...they were no more than steaks served up to portly politicians who controlled the personnel departments of the TV stations. (Showgirls in Italy)

~ Tobias Jones

Tobias Jones Hard Boiled Italy Rome Sexism

The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theater. The theater had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began rotting, the theater began showing second-run films, and then old movies, and finally foreign-language films.

~ Ed Mcbain

Ed Mcbain Cinema Film Hard Boiled