Philip Marlowe Quotes

The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he'd kicked his grandmother. ~ Raymond Chandler

If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat - just to see what ran out of it."
"Caterpillar blood," I said. ~ Raymond Chandler

The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlowe ... Investigations." It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with same legend which is not locked. Come on in
there's nobody here but me an a big bluebottle fly. But not if you're from Manhattan, Kansas. ~ Raymond Chandler

I bet it was also the triumphant Aha! and not the truth itself that had fueled all those famous literary detectives I knew not much about except their names - Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes, Joe and Frank Hardy. I felt like yelling something celebratory on my way home, something like, Yeah! or Fuck, yeah! just like Marlowe would have yelled, just like the Hardys would have yelled, and maybe Holmes, too, although maybe that's why he kept Watson around; to tell Holmes to simmer down and not get too far ahead of himself. ~ Brock Clarke

They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o'-shanter which wasn't any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.
I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:
You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective? ~ Raymond Chandler

No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective. ~ Raymond Chandler

Philip Marlowe, 38, a private licence operator of shady reputation, was apprehended by police last night while crawling through the Ballona Storm Drain with a grand piano on his back. Questioned at the University Heights Police Station, Marlowe declared he was taking the piano to the Maharajah of Coot-Berar. Asked why he was wearing spurs, Marlowe declared that a client's confidence was sacred. Marlowe is being held for investigation. Chief Hornside said police were not yet ready to say more. Asked if the piano was in tune, Chief Hornside declared that he had played the Minute Waltz on it in thirty-five seconds and so far as he could tell there were no strings in the piano. He intimated that someting else was. A complete statement to the press will be made within twelve hours, Chief Hornside said abruptly. Speculation is rife that Marlowe was attempting to dispose of a body. ~ Raymond Chandler

A Franciscan Benediction ~ Philip Yancey

I'll take my Gut over Google any day ~ Philip McKernan

For a brief period of time the American electric-sign industry looked beyond its most immediate market and collaborated with store designers and architects in creating a style which became known as 'stream-line.' Later it became known as 'American Déco.' Whatever it was called or will be called in the future, it represents in terms of neon a thrust away from isolated signage toward an area of architectural ornamentation in which signage is but one element in an overall plan. - Rudi Stern ~ Philip Di Lemme

The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake. ~ Philip Pullman

God's careful instructions for building the tabernacle in Exodus 31 remind us that his perfection sets the standard for whatever we create in his name. Whatever we happen to make-not only in the visual arts, but in all the arts-we should make it as well as we can, offering God our very best. ~ Philip Graham Ryken

If you want to change a person, you've got to change the situation. ~ Philip Zimbardo

The good needs fear no law, It is his safety and the bad man's awe. ~ Philip Massinger

They shared much with Bloomsbury, including love of beauty, companionship, and conversation, but they differed from their older London counterpart in their religious ardor, their social conservatism, and their embrace of fantasy, myth, and (mostly) conventional literary techniques instead of those dazzling experiments with time, character, narrative, and language that mark the modernist aesthetic. ~ Philip Zaleski

If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

It's like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can't do is choose neither. ~ Philip Pullman

Wart meets Merlin for the first time – only for Merlin, who lives backwards, it's the last time. The old wizard weeps and the boy can't understand why. It's a powerful expression of the gulf between the ancient and the young. ~ Philip Womack

With true beauty, there is no illusion. ~ James Philip Head

Detective work is neither a happy nor a satisfying business, Miss Rook," said Jackaby, settling in as the amber buildings sailed past our window. "Marlowe will understand." "I don't understand at all." Commissioner Marlowe kept his voice low and even as we sat across from him the following morning. ~ William Ritter

Some who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong ... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens. ~ Philip Yancey

Death: the anaesthetic from which none come round. ~ Philip Larkin

It is easy to infuse a most fervent devotion into others, even in a short time; but the great matter is - to persevere. ~ Philip Neri

Christian faith is ... basically about love and being loved and reconciliation. These things are so important, they're foundational and they can transform individuals, families. ~ Philip Yancey

A lot of deaths feel sad. Philip Seymour Hoffman's feels like a robbery. ~ James Poniewozik

Human beings had invented war, invented and manufactured the weapons, even invented the players, the fighters, the actors of the war. But they themselves could not venture forth, could not wage it themselves. ~ Philip K. Dick

I resemble that worm which crawls through dust,
Lives in the dust, eats dust
Until a passerby's foot crushes it. ~ Philip K. Dick

I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009. I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date. ~ Philip Roth

What is the world of the spirits? It is nothing I know about. I don't know what spirit is."
"Spirit is what matter does. ~ Philip Pullman

The most important thing is to forecast where customers are moving, and be in front of them. ~ Philip Kotler

It was not a question of Philip's having "lost hold." He had never grasped hold. Something had not happened that should have happened: a teacher, or someone, should have said: This one, Philip Fowler, he must be a craftsman, do something small, and delicate and intricate; we must get him trained for that. Look how perfectly he does things! He can't fold a shirt or arrange some chips and a piece of fish on a plate without making a picture of it.
It had not happened. ~ Doris Lessing

Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar. ~ Philip Sington

Shame on you! Think what this child has done! You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less. ~ Philip Pullman

Maturity
A stationary sense ... as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful
Some say, desired.
And this must be the prime of life ... I blink,
As if at pain; for it is pain, to think
This pantomime
Of compensating act and counter-act,
Defeat and counterfeit, makes up, in fact,
My ablest time. ~ Philip Larkin

Like all fundamentalists who get their clammy hands on the levers of power, the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life ... Market fundamentalism, this madness that's infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days. The greedy ghost understands profit all right. But that's all. What he doesn't understand is enterprises that don't make a profit, because they're set up to do something different. He doesn't understand libraries at all ... ~ Philip Pullman

New West End Company ensures that there is a body that can put significant investment into the West End, targeted directly to the needs of the area and particularly the customers. Great progress is being made to improve Oxford Street and make it a great destination. ~ Philip Green

Life's essential harmony is within each of us. So also is life's brokenness. To be part of transformation is to look falseness in the face, to passionately name it and denounce it in our world, and at the same time to clearly identify its shadow within our own hearts and to do battle with it there. ~ J. Philip Newell

Everywhere a greater joy is preceded by a greater suffering, ~ Philip Yancey

Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a small sideroom an old-fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that repelled him. Think of all the Iowans, the thought, who've embraced eternity in this listless room. ~ Philip K. Dick

Outside Soviet Russia, and following the last symphonies of Mahler, Nielsen and Sibelius, an element of obsolescence has unmistakably attached itself to the genre. One could, perhaps, be forgiven for regarding Stravinsky's two ironic stylizations of the symphony as a fitting farewell salute. And yet the Shostakovich symphonies have, in Philip Larkin's phrase, 'penetrated the public mind' to an extent that has put them on a level with Beethoven. ~ Pauline Fairclough

It thrills observers and makes the wearer feel a million dollars. ~ Philip Treacy

The Council of Nicaea. An ecumenical council was a new experiment. Local councils had long since grown to be a recognised organ of the Church both for legislation and for judicial proceedings. But no precedent as yet prescribed, no ecclesiastical law or theological principle had as yet enthroned, the 'General Council' as the supreme expression of the Church's mind. ~ Philip Schaff

That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it. ~ Philip Reeve

I think I needed the resilience of approaching my late 30s to come to terms with the resilience I required to learn to sing. ~ Philip Selway

What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated. ~ Philip Yancey

Yeah, writers do hate writing. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman