The Lady in the Lake, p. 542 (2)

a small oval lake deep in trees and rocks and wild grass, like a drop of dew caught in a curled leaf.

Farewell, My Lovely, 251

At the end he thought and then spoke slowly and what he said had wisps of fog clinging to it, like the beads on a mustache. Maybe that made it seem wiser than it was, maybe not.

"Bay City Blues," p. 241 (from Killer in the Rain, 2nd printing)

The road twisted, dipped, soared along the flank of the foothills, a scatter of lights to the northwest and a carpet of them to the south. The three piers seemed remote from this point, thin pencils of light laid out on a pad of black velvet.

"Bay City Blues," p. 242 (from Killer in the Rain, 2nd printing)

The lobby--they called it a foyer--looked like an MGM set for a night club in the Broadway Melody of 1980.

"Bay City Blues," p. 264 (from Killer in the Rain, 2nd printing)

It was cold up their in the hills, but the air was clear and the stars were like pieces of polished chromium.

"Bay City Blues," p. 278 (from Killer in the Rain, 2nd printing)

It looked like somebody was going to open up the Austrian Case wide enough for the mayor to think it was a new boulevard and come out with a bunch of flowers and make a speech.

(sounds like some other mayor I know, eh?)

The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, p. 69

You can't make good pictures without good screenplays, and you can't get good screenplays from people who do not know how to write them, technically speaking, but have been debauched and spoiled by Hollywood to such an extent that technique is all they have left. Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered pot holder.

The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, p. 29

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive."

There's also a really great poem that follows this that is totally worth reading, worth copying, worth hanging up in your room. Really, it's great. Go read it! It's too long for me to type up here.

Farewell, My Lovely, 242

The eighty-five-cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.

Farewell, My Lovely, 181

'Try again. And skim it. All I want is the cream.'

Farewell, My Lovely, 160 & 164

'Listen, Hemingway, don't repeat everything I say,' I said. ...
'A gag,' I said, 'An old, old gag.'
'Who is this Hemingway person at all?'
'A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.'

The Lady in the Lake, ?

This is the ultimate end of the fog belt, and the beginning of that semi-desert region where the sun is as light and dry as old sherry in the morning, as hot as a blast furnace at noon, and drops like an angry brick at nightfall.

Farewell, My Lovey, ? (somewhere near the beginning)

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.

The Little Sister, ?

The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives.

The High Window, ?

Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them.

The Long Goodbye, p. 359 (Penguin Crime Fiction UK)

And when she spoke her voice had the lucid emptiness of that mechanical voice on the telephone that tells you the time, and if you keep listening, which people don't because they have no reason to, it will keep on telling you the passing seconds for ever, without the slightest change of inflection.

The Little Sister, p.?

At 3 a.m. I was walking the floor and listening to Katchaturian working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it.

The Little Sister, p.?

I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that had been closed too long. But the coloured lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful.

Poodle Springs, p. 27 (Berkley Mystery)

I could hear the hum of the air conditioner somewhere out of sight, like a locust behind the building.

I pushed through it into the suddenly cool indoors. It felt good after the hard desert heat, but it felt artificial too, like the soothing touch of an embalmer.

Trouble is My Business, p. 180 (Vintage Crime)

His chin came down and I hit it. I hit it as if I was driving the last spike on the first transcontinental railroad. I can still feel it when I flex my knuckles.