Monday, January 22, 2024
Monday, September 06, 2021
Top Ten Raymond Chandler Quotes from The High Window
Hard-boiled Noir, huh?
librarything |
I'd never read this particular Phillip Marlowe tale, but am enjoying it immensely. Absolutely loaded with fun descriptive Chandlerisms:
1. "She had eyes like strange sins."
2. "Below his eyes . . . there was a wide path of freckles, like a mine field on a war map."
3. The blonde sobbed in a rather theatrical manner and showed me an open mouth twisted with misery and ham acting."
4. "We looked at each other with the clear innocent eyes of a couple of used car salesmen."
5. ". . . and a granite coffee pot that smelled like sacks in a hot barn."
6. " He had a sort of dry musty smell, like a fairly clean Chinaman."
7. "From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."
8. "My face was stiff with thought, or with something that made my face stiff."
9. "[Net curtains] puckered in and out like the lips of a toothless old man sleeping."
10. "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."
brainpickings.org |
Featured Post
John P. McCann Sizzle Page
'Twas suggested I post a few episodes of my work in a pleasant spot. I've chosen here. Sadly, not everything I've written has y...
-
Twice in the last eight years I've run the Santa Clarita 5k on Independence Day. Back in 2007 it was sizzling hot. Three years late...
-
More memories from the boxes . Here's my life at Warner Bros. that year. Cleaned up my office after the Northridge earthquake rearranged...