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Carmen Sternwood: You're not very tall, are you?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I tried to be.
-
Eddie Mars: Convenient, the door being open when you didn't have a key, eh?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it? By the way, how'd you happen to have one?
Eddie Mars: Is that any of your business?
Philip Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Eddie Mars: I could make your business mine.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.
-
General Sternwood: Do you like orchids?
Philip Marlowe: Not particularly.
General Sternwood: Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. Their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
-
Philip Marlowe: Oh, Eddie, you don't have anybody watching me, do you? Tailing me in a gray Plymouth coupe, maybe?
Eddie Mars: No, why should I?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I can't imagine, unless you're worried about where I am all the time.
Eddie Mars: I don't like you that well.
-
Vivian: How did you find her?
Marlowe: I didn't find her.
Vivian: Well then how did you...
Marlowe: I haven't been here, you haven't seen me, and she hasn't been out of the house all evening.
-
Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Marlowe: Who's he?
Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.
-
Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is, what makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.
-
Vivian: You go too far, Marlowe.
Marlowe: Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he's walking out of your bedroom.
-
Marlowe: You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.
-
Vivian: You've forgotten one thing - me.
Philip Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.
[last lines]
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General Sternwood: How do you like your brandy, sir?
Philip Marlowe: In a glass.
-
[after a kiss]
Vivian: I liked that. I'd like more.
-
Philip Marlowe: She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.
-
Vivian: I don't like your manners!
Marlowe: I'm not crazy about yours. I didn't ask to see you. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like 'em myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings, and I don't mind your ritzing me, or drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.
-
Philip Marlowe: My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains! You know, you're the second guy I've met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.
-
Vivian: Why did you have to go on?
Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.
-
General Sternwood: You may smoke, too. I can still enjoy the smell of it. Nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. You're looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider.
-
General Sternwood: If I seem a bit sinister as a parent, Mr. Marlowe, it's because my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian hypocrisy. I need hardly add that any man who has lived as I have and who indulges, for the first time, in parenthood, at my age, deserves all he gets.
-
Philip Marlowe: You made a mistake. Mrs. Rutledge didn't want to see me.
Norris: I'm sorry, sir. I make many mistakes.
-
Philip Marlowe: Hm.
General Sternwood: What does that mean?
Philip Marlowe: [laughing] It means, "Hm!"
-
General Sternwood: You knew him too?
Philip Marlowe: Yes, in the old days, when he used to run rum out of Mexico and I was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.
General Sternwood: My respects to you, sir. Few men ever swapped more than one shot with Sean Regan.
-
Philip Marlowe: I know he was a good man at whatever he did. No one was more pleased than I when I heard you had taken him on as your... whatever he was.
-
General Sternwood: I assume they have all the usual vices, besides those they've invented for themselves.
-
Philip Marlowe: Thanks for the drink, general.
General Sternwood: I enjoyed your drink as much as you did, sir.
-
Norris: Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?
Philip Marlowe: No, just having fun trying to guess what they are.
-
Vivian: Do you always think you can handle people like, uh, trained seals?
Philip Marlowe: Uh-huh. I usually get away with it too.
Vivian: How nice for you.
-
[in a bookstore]
Philip Marlowe: You do sell books, hmm?
Agnes Lowzier: What do those look like, grapefruit?
Philip Marlowe: Well, from here they look like books.
-
[making a crank call]
Philip Marlowe: I can do what? Where? Oh no, I wouldn't like that. Neither would my daughter.
[hangs up]
Philip Marlowe: I hope the sergeant never traces that call.
-
Philip Marlowe: You wanna tell me now?
Vivian: Tell you what?
Philip Marlowe: What it is you're trying to find out. You know, it's a funny thing. You're trying to find out what your father hired me to find out, and I'm trying to find out why you want to find out.
Vivian: You could go on forever, couldn't you? Anyway it'll give us something to talk about next time we meet.
Philip Marlowe: Among other things.
-
Taxi Driver: If you can use me again sometime, call this number.
Philip Marlowe: Day and night?
Taxi Driver: Uh, night's better. I work during the day.
-
Eddie Mars: Your story didn't sound quite right.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, that's too bad. You got a better one?
Eddie Mars: Maybe I can find one.
-
Philip Marlowe: Did I hurt you much, sugar?
Agnes Lowzier: You and every other man I've ever met.
-
Philip Marlowe: How'd you happen to pick out this place?
Vivian: Maybe I wanted to hold your hand.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, that can be arranged.
-
Philip Marlowe: You the guy that's been tailing me?
Harry Jones: Yeah, the name's Jones. Harry Jones. I want to see you.
Philip Marlowe: Swell. Did you want to see those guys jump me?
Harry Jones: I didn't care one way or the other.
Philip Marlowe: You could've yelled for help.
Harry Jones: If a guy's playing a hand, I let him play it. I'm no kibitzer.
Philip Marlowe: You got brains.
-
Agnes Lowzier: Is Harry there?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, yeah, he's here.
Agnes Lowzier: Put him on, will you?
Philip Marlowe: He can't talk to you.
Agnes Lowzier: Why?
Philip Marlowe: Because he's dead.
-
Agnes Lowzier: Well, so long, copper. Wish me luck. I got a raw deal.
Philip Marlowe: Hey, your kind always does.
-
Lash Canino: What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a gun before? What do you want me to do, count three like they do in the movies?
-
Philip Marlowe: Let me do the talking, angel. I don't know yet what I'm going to tell them. It'll be pretty close to the truth.
-
Carmen Sternwood: You're cute.
Philip Marlowe: I'm getting cuter every minute.
-
Carmen Sternwood: Is he as cute as you are?
Philip Marlowe: Nobody is.
-
Philip Marlowe: Somebody's always giving me guns.
-
Vivian: So you're a private detective? I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?
Philip Marlowe: I'm not very tall either. Next time I'll come on stilts, wear a white tie and carry a tennis racket.
Vivian: I doubt if even that would help.
-
Vivian: What will your first step be?
Philip Marlowe: The usual one.
Vivian: I didn't know there was a usual one.
Philip Marlowe: Well, sure there is. It comes complete with diagrams, on page 47 of 'How to be a Detective in 10 Easy Lessons,' correspondence school text-book and, uh, your father offered me a drink.
Vivian: You must've read another one on how to be a comedian.
-
Philip Marlowe: I collect blondes in bottles, too.
-
Carmen Sternwood: You're cute. I like you.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, what you see's nothing, I got a Balinese dancing girl tattooed across my chest.
-
Philip Marlowe: Get up, angel, you look like a Pekingese.
-
Philip Marlowe: [speaking into the phone] Hello, let me talk to Mr. Mars.
Eddie Mars: This is Mars.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, hello, Eddie. This is Marlowe.
Eddie Mars: Marlowe?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, Marlowe. Or what's left of him.
-
Philip Marlowe: [speaking into the phone] Bernie? This is Marlowe. I got some more red points for you.
Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls: Who is it this time?
-
Philip Marlowe: How bout a cup of coffee, Bernie?
Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls: Uh-uh. I can't afford to be seen with you.
-
Agnes Lowzier: A half-smart guy, that's what I always draw. Never once a man who's smart all the way around the course. Never once.
Philip Marlowe: I hurt you much, sugar?
Agnes Lowzier: You and every other man I've ever met.
-
Philip Marlowe: [to General Sternwood, after his daughter Carmen had thrown herself at him] You ought to wean her, she's old enough.
-
Philip Marlowe: Don't you know any better than to wake a man up at two o'clock in the afternoon?
-
Vivian: [Vivian is leaving Mr. Marlowe's office] Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe.
Philip Marlowe: [When Vivian tries to open the door the deadbolt is locked] Well, it wasn't intentional.
Vivian: [Vivian unlocks the deadbolt, turns and smiles] Try it sometime.
[Vivian leaves and closes the door behind her]
-
Vivian: I'll have a scotch, messy, please.
Max - Head Waiter: Yes, ma'am.
Philip Marlowe: Scotch and plain water.
Max - Head Waiter: Yes, sir.
-
Philip Marlowe: She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.
-
Acme Book Shop Proprietress: You begin to interest me, vaguely.
The Big Sleep Quotes
Extended Reading
