Detective Noir Quotes

#1. 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")

Francis M. Nevins Jr.

#2. A woman could do a lot of crazy things for a pair of fine-looking dimples.

Amy Andrews

#3. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.

Raymond Chandler

#4. Quote taken from Chapter 1:
That's the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She's a keeper." He let that part gel in me. "Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham.

Ed Lynskey

#5. Ah ha!' the Doc screeched suddenly, wheeling around. 'The salicylic acid! Maybe it SHOULD have been heated first!

Clare Havens

#6. About Tommy, you went through your whole life craving these little pockets of time and missing them for more time than you had them.

Lily Gardner

#7. Simon's brain tried to comprehend the situation. 'Was an international supermodel really holding Doc Gutson, leader of the infamous Bloodworth Gang, captive?

Clare Havens

#8. Anything that has to do with noir and space, I'm gonna love. When you've got a noir-ish, pulpy detective in a science fiction show, I'm all in, in that regard.

Thomas Jane

#9. A diamond wedding ring, you say?"
I studied his face. Was he putting me on? He looked earnest. "As any guy would expect, a diamond is what she's after," I said. "Did you hold out hope you'd get by for anything less?

Ed Lynskey

#10. There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby.

Lily Gardner

#11. That was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity.

Lily Gardner

#12. I'm a detective, but nuns could stonewall Sam Spade into an asylum

Dennis Lehane

#13. My feet crunched over dry hickory leaves. Wood rangers had stapled up Smokey Bear ("Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!") signs along the state roads. One cigarette butt flicked out a passing car window and there'd be real hell to pay.

Ed Lynskey

#14. Tailing someone is like maintaining a relationship: you keep at it until they give you the slip, or until they confirm everything you suspect them of.

Mark Crutchfield

#15. I like two men, two guns that kind of thing, I don't do subtle.

C.S. Boag

#16. A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.

Raymond Chandler

#17. 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

#18. From Chapter 1:
The main rub was the lack of RnR and I burned out. Three years and three stripes later, I ejected from the MP Corps, vowing I'd never do police or criminal investigative work again. Instead, I returned home when I should've learned better.

Ed Lynskey

#19. I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

Marie Windsor

#20. There was nothing like the cold, heavy steel of a gun, the soft moan of an appreciative woman or the sharp burn of a good single malt to make a man grateful to be alive. Tonight, with his gun gone and his sex life a wasteland, Dash had to settle for whiskey.

Amy Andrews

#21. When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no.

V.T. Davy

#22. 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

#23. A Dick and Jane story written in blood and battered bone.

See Spot.

See Spot run.

See Spot run from a gaping chest wound.

Run Spot run.

See Detective smear Spot into a baggy for DNA testing.

J.E. Mac

#24. In near panic, I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin's roofline a bursting fireball.

Ed Lynskey

#25. He was wearing a gleaming cream-coloured linen suit, and a Panama hat. The weirdest thing about this was that he was not the most outlandish-looking person in the room by a long way. Not that Little Miss Dresses-Like-Bogart over here has a right to complain

Alexis Hall

#26. Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.

Philip Kerr

#27. The Land of Civilian was a dry bitter place where you sat in your car staring at drawn curtains and closed doors for hours on end, and where everything was a big, freaking secret.

Lily Gardner

#28. Expect the unexpected like a chain smoking, hard drinking, monochrome world dwelling Noir Detective

Dean Cavanagh

#29. 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

#30. 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.

Ross Macdonald

#31. 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