Screwball Noir Quotes

Lies are so suburban...But murder is nice and clean. ~ Carole Morin

Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction. ~ Pauline Kael

Sandy's face was very close to mine in the crowded room. She had a wide mouth and a lot of teeth. She had turned in her seat so that she had one thigh on each side of my leg. Her chest was against my arm. In another minute we wouldn't have to go anywhere to have sex. ~ Robert B. Parker

As I trotted down the hall, Fritz was holding the street door open and three people were entering in the shape of a sandwich – a dick, Zorka, and another dick. ~ Rex Stout

You're a crime fiction writer if...The injustices of this world boil your blood. You become a fucking supernova. So you write. ~ Verge Le Noir

Because I love you," I said. "Because you are in my life like the music at the edge of silence. ~ Robert B. Parker

The lighter something is, the easier it is to darken it. ~ Bruce Crown

I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them ~ James Ellroy

Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both. ~ V. Alexander

The ways of the Lord," I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant."
"Adler?"
"Theodor Reik, I think. ~ Robert B. Parker

Carrying a shotgun makes you less amusing. ~ Barry Graham

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting! ~ Marie Windsor

I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn't anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops ... Every goddamned restaurant I go to, it's always the same way ... They'll have some old bag on the payroll - I figure they keep her locked up in the mop closet until they see me coming. And they'll doll her up in the dirtiest goddamned apron they can find and smear that crappy red polish all over her fingernails, and everything about her is smeary and sloppy and smelly. And she's the dame that always waits on me. ~ Jim Thompson

Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that. ~ James Ellroy

It's only crazy if we fail. ~ Henry Mosquera

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living?
You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he's nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn't have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy…

You've got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You've got it. You're young, I guess: you'd call thirty young, and you're strong. You don't have much education, but you've got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you've had to do with this is as far you've got And something tellys you, you're not going much farther if any.

And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can't stop hoping. You can't stop wondering…

…Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn't see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something tha ~ Jim Thompson

She wasn't just a B-girl, she was carrying the whole ugly world in her eyes. ~ Megan Abbott

Candy nodded absently.
"Okay," she said. "What shall I wear?"
"A gun," I said. ~ Robert B. Parker

But this month is all about CITY OF JASMINE which I hope you already have in your hot little hands. My favorite review snippet? KIRKUS REVIEWS said it's "part screwball comedy".
I can't tell you how much time I spent with Carole Lombard and William Powell and Irene Dunne when I was writing it. I adore the 30s comedies for their light-hearted take on relationships and adventure - and the glamorous settings and occasional dash of intrigue only heighten the magic. (Did you know that Nicholas Brisbane from my Lady Julia series was named for THE THIN MAN's Nick Charles? And apologies to Dashiell Hammett, but I fell in love with the film long before I read the book and appreciated how much it had been lightened in the adaptation!) So when you're reading CITY OF JASMINE, give some thought to who you'd like to see playing Evie and Gabriel - I'd love to hear who you'd cast in your own production. ~ Deanna Raybourn

Kraop was the sound that I heard. Heard it twice--kraop, kraop--one time each for my two fingers that got broke. I heard my bones pop before I felt anything, gunshot-loud they echoed in my ears. Maybe that was the tip-off what'd just happened was going to hurt like hell. Wrong. It hurt so bad, I didn't feel a thing. ~ John Ridley

I guess what's most surprised me in most of the reviews is that they don't seem to get the noir story in the dream sequence, so they analyze it like a straight noir movie. ~ Brian De Palma

Kitty, I am sorry if I misled you but..."
"Oh, shut up." She rolled her eyes and slid next to him placing her mouth on his ear. Evan groaned as he felt her fingers on the tent at his pants. The scent of her skin hit his nostrils like sweet, exotic perfume and right then he longed to bury his head in her shoulder, to eat her out and make her cum before he fucked her ass. "I know what you need and all those filthy things you crave to do with her. Punish her, claim her as really yours, fuck her till she screams, make her beg on her hands and knees. ~ Lilah E. Noir

The dentist swiveled on his heels and disappeared, leaving me there to massage my jaw back into feeling after its brief, masochistic marriage to the top of my wooden desk. ~ Jonathan Lethem

You rile this gal and she'll go wildcat on your ass.
Patti (Pat) Canella- Dockland murders/Ghosts of your past. ~ Alan Place

Today, women have as much of a place as protagonists and antagonist as men. ~ JP Wolfe

There were some things that I found I really enjoyed singing about; like, on the title track, there's this film-noir character of a woman who's sort of losing it in a room. ~ Diana Krall

She was blond as hell, wearing a lot of black. ~ Kenneth Fearing

The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne ~ Laurie Stevens

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. ~ Christopher G. Moore

You do know I'm not psychic, right?'
Dash looked down at her. 'Joy...you do know that normal people don't see ghosts, right? ~ Amy Andrews

Just the night before, a puma's howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn't get any richer than that. ~ Ed Lynskey

Yeah, I was always a big fan of noir. ~ Robert Rodriguez

I don't carry a weapon, Mr. Bogatyrev. Not usually. I've never been in a situation where I needed one. Either the other guy has one, and I do what he says, or he doesn't, and I make him do what I say. ~ George Alec Effinger

Film noir has a mood that everyone can feel. It's people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music. It's a beautiful thing. ~ David Lynch

It was a bright day, but cold, and the whores had emerged, working the Combat Zone, looking cold and bizarre in their miniskirts, boots, and blond wigs. Being seductive at twenty degrees was heavy going, I thought. Being horny at twenty degrees wasn't all that easy either. ~ Robert B. Parker

A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet. ~ Raymond Chandler

Susan had decided to sit by the pool at the hotel with a copy of a book by Alice Miller called The Drama of the Gifted Child. ~ Robert B. Parker

Do you have a first name, Mr. Spenser'?" Jill said. She had a soft girlish voice with just a hint of huskiness at the edges.

I told her my first name. ~ Robert B. Parker

Shouldering the duffel bag with the Marine Corps bulldog, Old Man knocked Jan's photo off the bed table. He turned to stone staring down at the photo. His face then splintered into hurt. Tears seeped into his eyes. He grappled for the nearest bedpost and slumped forward on extended arms. His shoulders jerked and head sagged a little while his heart broke. Old Man cried the mute cry of men of his generation. ~ Ed Lynskey

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

You're a full portion of what I don't like,' she said. 'Get out of my way.' I didn't move. She didn't move. We were both sitting down – and not even close to each other. ~ Raymond Chandler

His belly was flabby, and it got softer every time I hit it. I hit it often. ~ Carroll John Daly

He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true. ~ Jim Thompson

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find. ~ Otto Penzler

If you leave me here," the guy on the floor said, "he'll kill me tomorrow morning."
Parker looked at him. "So you've still got tonight," he said. ~ Richard Stark

He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep clefts between red wales. "I don't give a damn about your honesty," he told her, trying to make himself speak calmly. "I don't care what kind of tricks you're up to, what your secrets are, but I've got to have something to show that you know what you're doing."
"I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it's all for the best, and
"
"Show me," he ordered. "I'm willing to help you. I've done what I could so far. If necessary I'll go ahead blindfolded, but I can't do it without more confidence in you than I've got now. You've got to convince me that you know what it's all about, that you're not simply fiddling around by guess and by God, hoping it'll come out all right somehow in the end. ~ Dashiell Hammett

The angry mob of villagers wield camera phones, the twenty-first century equivalent of pitchforks and flaming torches. ~ Erin Kelly

I wouldn't care to speculate about what it is in Westlake's psyche that makes him so good at writing about Parker, much less what it is that makes me like the Parker novels so much. Suffice it to say that Stark/Westlake is the cleanest of all noir novelists, a styleless stylist who gets to the point with stupendous economy, hustling you down the path of plot so briskly that you have to read his books a second time to appreciate the elegance and sober wit with which they are written. ~ Terry Teachout