I've got to think of a hundred and sixty million Americans, not of the three or four that happen to be the ones I love. And it wouldn't be a big thing - security is built on lots of little thing. I don't like to talk about it. (Calhoun Hightower in Danger for Breakfast)

Calvino remembered he had no food in the house and would have to go shopping on Sukhumvit Road. Then he planned to crawl into his bed and sleep, the kind of deep sleep without dreams or hopes, a sleep without regrets, without knowing or thinking how things got the way they are or how occasional fragments of decency escaped the forces of gravity.

But what the hell, I thought as I lay there in the dark. It could be souls rot away with the body, too. What did anything matter in the long run anyway, except memories? And they only lived on in corpses that couldn't talk.

The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night-to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house.

Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don't you feel it?"I felt it. I took it easy.

I rode a streetcar to the edge of the city limits, then I started to walk, swinging the old thumb whenever I saw a car coming.

What the hell, Jack? What the hell were you doing back there? Cool the hell off. You’re used to people staring. Get a grip, man. Too early to let things get to you.

His most characteristic detective stories end with the realization that no rational account of events is possible, and his suspense stories tend to close with terror not dissipated but omnipresent, like God.("Introduction")

The lady in the liquor store sold me a fifth of whiskey and the landlord’s name without taking her eyes off the book she was reading.

No whiskey, no religion, nothing.