Hard Boiled Wonderland Quotes

It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom. ~ Haruki Murakami

Grandfather always said school's a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either. ~ Haruki Murakami

Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. ~ Haruki Murakami

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy. ~ Haruki Murakami

Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. ~ Haruki Murakami

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant. ~ Haruki Murakami

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise. ~ Sue Grafton

The Libertarian Party convention wasn't much better. You will never find a more stammering, awkward, inarticulate group of people than libertarians. I still remember the convention the previous year, entitled 'Women of Liberty.' All of the speakers were women, and all of the topics boiled down to 'Effectively Communicating Libertarian Ideas to Women' - in other words, 'How to talk to girls.' Looking around at the nearly entirely white male audience, it wasn't hard to see why they chose this tack. ~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

Do I have to do everything myself?" The cry was a soul-freezing mixture of rage and torment. "Ain't there no one to stop asking questions and just do my bidding? By God, I'll kill and kill and kill and kill and never stop killing if people don't do what I say. I'll beat you dummies till the blood runs out of your eyes. I'll tie every man on this godforsaken island to a tree and he'll bark like a dog for me to throw him a bone. ~ Walter Kaylin

Human beings shouldn't have to enter such doors, shouldn't have to stay behind them. No moon ever entered there, no stars, no anything at all. They were worse than the grave, for in the grave is an absence of consciousness. And God, she reflected, ordered the grave for all of us; but God didn't order such burrows in a third-class New York City Hotel. ~ Cornell Woolrich

I used to have to hunt for hard-boiled eggs when I was a kid. What was the point of that? Was I supposed to be, 'Yay! I found them! Egg-salad sandwiches for everyone!' I was seven! I wanted chocolate, not bioavailable protein. ~ Jen Lancaster

I learned to baby the rabbit in sour cream, tenderer than chicken and less forgiving of distraction, as well as the banosh the way the Italians did polenta. You had to mix in the cornmeal little by little while the dairy simmered - Oksana boiled the cornmeal in milk and sour cream, never water or stock - as it clumped otherwise, which I learned the hard way. I learned to curdle and heat milk until it became a bladder of farmer cheese dripping out its whey through a cheesecloth tied over the knob of a cabinet door; how to use the whey to make a more protein-rich bread; how to sear pucks of farmer cheese spiked with raisins and vanilla until you had breakfast. I learned patience for the pumpkin preserves - stir gently to avoid turning the cubes into puree, let cool for the runoff to thicken, repeat for two days. How to pleat dumplings and fry cauliflower florets so that half the batter did not remain stuck to the pan. To marinate the peppers Oksana made for my grandfather on their first day together. To pickle watermelon, brine tomatoes, and even make potato latkes the way my grandmother made them. ~ Boris Fishman

Truth! Freedom! Justice! And a hard-boiled egg! ~ Terry Pratchett

She was in trouble, and she passed it on to me like an infection and standing here in the rain I didn't give a damn. ~ A.S. Fleischman

Her voice was a throaty screech, without melody, as false as her eyebrows and as sharp as her nails. (The King in Yellow) ~ Raymond Chandler

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. ~ Raymond Chandler

It was a regular family scene. All we had to do was clean up a few murders and a matter of international dope smuggling, then we could move next door to Donna Reed. ~ Walter Mosley

It was twenty-five minutes past nine when he got to the corner of Seventh and Spring, where the Metropole was. It was an old hotel that had once been exclusive and was now steering a shaky course between a receivership and a bad name at Headquarters. It had too much oily dark wood paneling, too many chipped gilt mirrors. Too much smoke hung below its low beamed lobby ceiling and too many grifters bummed around in its worn leather rockers. The blonde who looked after the big horseshoe cigar counter wasn't young any more and her eyes were cynical from standing off cheap dates. (Nevada Gas) ~ Raymond Chandler

Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up ~ Raymond Chandler

The Negro problem, like all other political problems, is fundamentally a moral issue. This is realism, not idealism. Those of my colleagues who believe that they are particularly 'hard boiled' because they overlook the fact that human beings are struggling for their consciences are simply unrealistic. ~ Gunnar Myrdal

His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in. (Guns at Cyrano's) ~ Raymond Chandler

Ah! This isn't raw egg at all! The egg white is actually a thinned seawater gelée (jelly)...
... and the yolk is salmon roe firmed in a gelatin!
The salmon roe pop crisply, filling the mouth with a rich saltiness...
... that is wrapped up in the mild smoothness of the gelée!"
"Oh! This looks like it's just a hard-boiled egg...
but the egg white is really a white asparagus mousse! And the yolk is hollandaise sauce made from real egg yolks!
The heavy richness of the hollandaise is perfectly balanced with the mild bitterness of the asparagus for an exquisite flavor!"
"Then what is this? It looks like an egg in its shell...."
"Oh, this?"
"She punctured it!"
"It's a milkshake. You drink it through the straw, like this. Once I removed the inside of the egg, I filled it with a milkshake made with milk, eggs and caramel."
"Mm!It's delicious! Its mellow sweetness and clean aftertaste bring to mind the freshness of an early morning!"
"And that is everything! All together, I call it...
..."The Three-Faces of-an-Egg Breakfast.""
What an utterly surprising dish! Each piece has an exquisite taste completely unlike what you would expect!
On this one plate...
... are miniature representations of...
... the flavors of the ocean, the forest and the earth ~ Yuto Tsukuda

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The pulse of New York City can be found on the bent elbows of the patrons in Pete's Tavern. ~ Mickey Wyte

We had a crisp, oily salad and slices of pink country sausages, an aioli of snails and cod and hard-boiled eggs with garlic mayonnaise, creamy cheese from Fontvielle, and a homemade tart. It was the kind of meal that the French take for granted and tourists remember for years. ~ Peter Mayle

When you write, you start with what you know and build from there. I knew a little something about the border, Texas and Mexico from my journalism days. Knew some cops and redneck outlaws, too. And I knew I wanted to write a noirish detective novel. So I started with that and went from there. Out popped Ed Earl Burch, Carla Sue Cantrell and THE LAST SECOND CHANCE: An Ed Earl Burch Novel. ~ Jim Nesbitt

Hammett was the ace performer ... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before. ~ Raymond Chandler

The fact that he gave her the creeps just proved she was normal. He had the flat, dead face of an item turned out by machines. His eyes were cold as marbles pressed into dough. His insides went with the surface. He could beat a man insane or take it himself, and it didn't mean a thing to him. ~ Walter Kaylin

I need to eat before a workout. If I exercise in the morning, I'll have a little oatmeal, cereal, or a hard-boiled egg with toast. If I go in the afternoon, I'll eat a turkey sandwich with cheese for lunch. ~ Ana Ortiz

Hard-boiled eggs are wonderful when they're really done right. I bring the water to a boil, and then I put in the eggs. And then I boil them for - well, it depends on the size of the egg - maybe eight minutes. ~ Alice Waters

I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many. ~ Avi

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. ~ James M. Cain

Yes, tell us, Ari. Tell us what you have seen."

Athena.

Dead flowers and flashing emerald beads threaded through her tangled, upswept hair.

A hard swallow went down down my throat, followed by a tightening of every muscle I possessed. All the emotions of my vision boiled over, as fresh and furious as they'd been a few moments ago. "You should know, you petty piece of shit. ~ Kelly Keaton

Her bosom filled the jacket like a pair of boxing gloves stuck inside it. ~ Walter Kaylin

When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no. ~ V.T. Davy

It was a dark, dismal afternoon, like they all seem to be
these days, when I got this call. I could hear the rain
battering the windowpane of my office when the phone rang. ~ C.S. Woolley

Lindsey
There is the usual hive of activity in the Brannon household this morning. Mrs Brannon is busy making breakfast for her daughter, Lindsey, making it just as she likes it: two slices of toast with home-made raspberry jam, a hard-boiled egg, shell peeled and the egg cut into slices, a cup of fresh Earl Grey tea with one brown sugar and a touch of milk, with a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice on the side – oranges bought from the greengrocer down the road. The same breakfast she has lovingly made for her daughter for over forty years. ~ Ross Lennon

Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had no heart any more, it had been broken; or not broken, it simply wasn't there any more. It had been scooped neatly out of me like the yolk from a hard-boiled egg, leaving the rest of me bloodless and congealed and hollow.
I'm heartless, I thought. Therefore I'm homeless. ~ Margaret Atwood

First morning, I steal white coffee cup from table. Second morning, I steal glass. So now in my room I can having tea or water. After breakfast I steal breads and boiled eggs for lunch, so I don't spending extra money on food. I even saving bacons for supper. So I saving bit money from my parents and using for cinema or buying books.

Ill–legal. I know. Only in this country three days and I already become thief. I never steal piece of paper in own country. Now I studying hard on English, soon I stealing their language too. ~ Xiaolu Guo

Cry Wolf' is a hard-boiled thriller written at break-neck pace of political corruption and organised, very violent crime. ~ Mike Ripley

A good choreographer is one that's going to collaborate, teach, guide - everything. The wonderful thing on 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' was that we had Philip Kwok - he choreographed John Woo's 'Hard Boiled,' and in the '70s, he was a martial arts actor, stunt man, fighter, choreographer in Hong Kong. ~ Mark Dacascos

Babies are never suicidal. Hard lives, not hard boiled eggs do that. ~ Brian Spellman

'Hard Boiled' is my last film in Hong Kong, before I moved to the U.S. It is the one film which is most accepted by the audience in the West. ~ John Woo

Don't stop,' said Lymond pleasantly. 'You've my father, my brother, my late sister and a whole clecking of aunts to get through. Auntie May is a good one to start with. Fifteen stone, and every spring she goes broody; and we find her out in the hen run on a clutch of burst yolks; except the year mother got there first and hard-boiled them. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

A hard-boiled little lamb going to talk a lot of lions out of their dinner, Comyn told himself grimly. ~ Leigh Brackett

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing. ~ Megan Abbott

This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing. ~ Ernest Hemingway,