Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

• Money sharpens the memory.
• Time passes slowly when you are actually doing something.
• Some voices stay in your mind.  Even in the dark people are recognized.
• You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at the politicians, but there are a lot of nice people in the world just the same.
• All crooks are gamblers, more or less, and all gamblers are superstitious--more or less.
• A guy can't stay honest if he wants to.  That's what's the matter with this country.  He gets chiseled out of his pants if he does.  You gotta play the game dirty or you don't eat.
• The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something they didn't have before.
• An empire can fall in a minute.
• A lie with a nod is still a lie, but it's an easy lie.

11/24/2012