Quotes & Sayings About Noir

From Chapter 1:
"You're not a local." I paused, unsure. "Or are you?"
"Sort of. Randall Van Dotson is my dad. I'm Rennie."
After tossing her head that coy, sweet way girls do, she gave me a candid appraisal. — Ed Lynskey

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

[on Springsteen's "Stolen Car":] A kind of mystical film noir, written by Kafka and shot by Polanski. — Adam Sweeting

It was 10:45. Across the continent Susan would be putting on her makeup now, and spraying some perfume on herself and making sure her hair was perfect. I looked at my reflection in the window. My hair wasn't perfect. Neither was I. — Robert B. Parker

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

You would kill or enslave everyone? There is so much beauty in the world that they'd destroy. How do you not see it? (Delphine)
Spoken like someone who has only lived in the cushioned world of dreams. You have no idea what the real world is like. What people will do to you when they know they can get away with it. People are absolutely cruel and I say more power to Noir for tearing it down. (Jericho) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Dastardly devious, cleverly conceived, and just a whole lot of fun to read, DEATH PERCEPTION is Lee Allen Howard on fire and at his finest. Rife with winsome weirdness, it's like the mutant stepchild of Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King, mixing a truly unique paranormal coming-of-age story with a quirky cast of offbeat noir characters into a novel that's simply unforgettable ... and hilariously original. A supernatural crime story, blazing with creative intrigue ... don't miss it. — Michael Arnzen

Just inside the doorway he puts down the bags, motions her to stand by them a minute. He saunters out ahead, carefully casual. Peers up one way, down the other. Nothing. The street's dead to the world.
Then suddenly, from nowhere, ping! Something flicks off the wall just behind him, flops at his feet like a dead bug. He doesn't bend down to look closer, he can tell what kind of a bug it is all right. He's seen that kind of bug before, plenty of times. No flash, no report, to show which direction it came from. Silencer, of course.
He hasn't moved. Fsssh! and a bee or wasp in a hurry strokes by his cheek, tingles, draws a drop of slow blood. Another pokk! from the wall, another bug rolling over. The insect-world seems very streamlined, very self-destructive, tonight. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

Pinot noir is the ultimate wine to have at the table. It's a white wine masquerading as red ... [while] chardonnay is a red masquerading as a white. — Kevin Zraly

Andrew Vachss, the best noir-ey writer in the history of the genre, called cats the lap dancers of the animal world. Give them attention, they're there. Stop, they're outta there. — MaryJanice Davidson

There are criminals everywhere these days, you know. One might end up missing the police! Who would have thought that possible?
The Maid
The Informer by Steen Langtrup — Steen Langstrup

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

She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story. — Catherynne M Valente

She just stood there and looked at the empty highway, and you could almost tell how bored she was by the way she stood. — Clifton Adams

Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist. — James Ellroy

I've been thinking of doing a sci-fi thriller or a sci-fi noir, if that's possible. — Kim Ji-woon

I told you not to piss off Noir. One day you're going to listen to me. (Asmodeus)
Why start now? (Jaden)
Ah, you're right. Bled so much now, it doesn't really matter, does it? (Asmodeus) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

She killed to get the dream she wanted, then found out it didn't want her back. — Robyn Hugo McIntyre

As the tall dark and handsome male star, Carey Grant always stands for male beauty and desirability, whether in a 30s screwball, a 40s film noir, or a 50s romantic comedy. He consequently turns around the orthodox gender between the one who looks and so desires, and the one who is looked at, and so is being desired. — Steven A. Cohen

A woman could do a lot of crazy things for a pair of fine-looking dimples. — Amy Andrews

He told himself she wasn't really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear. — David Goodis

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

So you're like a ... an amateur sleuth?"
"God no. I'm more like the hapless guys in those film-noir flicks we used to watch. I keep getting tangled up in bizarro events."
"Oh yes?" His eyes lit with enthusiasm. I was speaking his language now. "Guy Pearce in L.A. Confidential or William Hurt in Body Heat?"
"I was thinking more like Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam. — Josh Lanyon

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

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

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

They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived.
Their wives from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St.Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisther with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliance and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling on them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice ... and Alice ... — Megan Abbott

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

The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time. — Frank Miller

He had been hurt doing everything he had ever done. He expected it, even wanted it. Nothing centered a man like pain. Nothing drove the irrelevant bullshit our of your mind like the taste of your own blood. Duffy always wanted to tell people who were worried about the future of their children, or about God and the order of the universe, to go out and break a rib or two. A few broken ribs threw all thoughts of children, God and the order of the universe right out the window. Nobody with broken ribs ever had free-floating anxiety, or so Duffy was convinced. It was cheaper that a psychiatrist and never so humiliating. — Harry Crews

Robert Pattinson has the face of a film-noir dupe. It's a face that is searching and open and kind. It's a face that a certain type of woman might want to fool because, in its intensely old-fashioned kindness, the face says, I love you. Fool me. — Wesley Morris

Conversation between Susan's therapist and Spenser -
"And when you find her? Then what?"
"Then she will be free again to come here and work with you until she can make the choices she wishes to make."
"And what if you are not that choice?"
"I think I will be. But I can't control that. What I can do is see that she's free to choose. — Robert B. Parker

Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers. — Philip Kerr

Sam Spade is as gray as the economic skies over America and moves through the story as cool and slick as a Teflon cat. — Stephen Sullivan

When I heard the gunshots, though, I knew - knew beyond the shadow of a doubt - that somewhere in Los Angeles Bette Davis was on the prowl and packing heat. ("Shadows From The Screen") — Richard Valley

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman's boat."

Johannes aka 'BB'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup — Steen Langstrup

In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb. — Dennis Lehane

You are so fierce, she whispered. Yet for her. hebled. He, who'd sworn he wouldn't cross Noir, had done so. Not just because Noir had threatened him. She didn't believe that. From the very beginning, he'd protected her in a way few people had. Jericho hated the world, yet he'd been her self-appointed guardian. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

He looked as if he'd got a lot of pleasure out of going ten rounds with your grandmother and making sure she went the whole distance. — Richard Brautigan

Gary Robinson died hungry.

He wanted fried chicken, the three-piece box for $2.19. Drunk, loud, and obnoxious, he pushed ahead of seven customers on line at a fast-food chicken outlet. The counter girl told him that his behavior was impolite. She calmed him down with sweet talk, and he agreed to step to the end of the line. His turn came just before closing time, just after the fried chicken ran out.

He punched the counter girl so hard her ears rang, and a security guard shot him - three times. — Edna Buchanan

I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees. — Lawrence Block

As a genre, the noir of post-World War II was based on characters who were weak or repellent, bound to let down us and themselves. — Steve Erickson

I pity those born of the lighter side. They have no understanding of how seductive cruelty is. The music made out of screams and pleas for mercy. Mmmm. Nothing better. (Noir) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can't expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar. — Philip Kerr

Marlowe's the name. The guy you've been trying to follow around for a couple of days."
"I ain't following anybody, doc."
"This jalopy is. Maybe you can't control it. Have it your own way. I'm now going to eat breakfast in the coffee shop across the street: orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast, honey, three or four cups of coffee, and a toothpick. I am then going up to my office, which is on the seventh floor of the building right opposite you. If you have anything that's worrying you beyond endurance, drop up and chew it over. I'll only be oiling my machine gun. — Raymond Chandler

He always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that he was empty. — Michael Connelly

I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth. — Cornell Woolrich

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white. — Paul Schrader

The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes. — George Alec Effinger

All guys are scared of each other, didn't you know that? I'm not the only one. We're all born afraid.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

This is the Rock, sweetheart," the owner added. "There's no tragedy you can't profit from. — Henry Mosquera

Lionel Essrog, the twitching, barking, gabbling narrator of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, 'Motherless Brooklyn,' is no movie-of-the-week novelty grafted onto a noir mystery. Maybe his Tourette's is a gimmick, but it's a gimmick with depth, with soul. — Gary Krist

There is always a unique atmosphere in the car when you drive through the City with a dead body in the back. — Steen Langstrup

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

FICTION is a series of unintended coincidence,confabulation,and quasi-lucid lying made plausible enough for an author and a reader to cohabitate for a secret, brief and sinful affair. Nothing is real.Except imagination~with a pinch of perception, and a dash of collusion used as the Clabber.
Be So Advised. — J.D. Brayton

I was always into noir. When I lived in Vermont I was drawing stuff that looked like an amateur doing Sin City. When I first got to New York I was swiftly informed that they only did guys in tights. — Frank Miller

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

I have saved no one but myself and now I watch for the other universe to unravel in my skull, for the sky to become my own skin and fill with stars. — Will Christopher Baer

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

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

I'd done it, I'd crossed the line between accepted behavior and behavior most of the population would consider a lynching offense, and that morning I felt as real as any of the men in the Escape commercials. It had been dirty and nasty but I wanted more. — Matthew Stokoe

F***, some people are so determined to be good that it makes me want to puke.
Bruno Hanson in
In The Shadow of Sadd. — Steen Langstrup

She lives in a town of sorry history,
indifferent to ethical perspectives,
apathetic to female attributes,
cargo and trunk liners,
spilled oil in the garage,
telephone poles shaped like liquor bottles,
sustaining burly weather,
cardiac distressing cold,
tobacco and mortality,
lying face-up on the bar's concrete floor,
no one can waste a life
faster than a Montana redneck. — Brian D'Ambrosio

One of the things I was starting to realize, one of the things that Avery had taught me, was that it was possible to love someone without loving every single thing about them. Even when some of those things seemed unforgivable. — Stella Noir

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred — Shaun Considine

It was closing in on midnight, the kind of midnight you only get on Uranus after a three day bender. Ultramarine fog reeking of ethanol and neon and some passing whore's rosewater. Snow piled up like bodies in tbhe street. Twenty-seven moons lighting up what ought to be a respectable witching hour so you can't help but see yourself staring back in every slick glowpink skyscraper. — Catherynne M Valente

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

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

Barbara Stanwyck, in particular, was peerless in everything from high and low comedy to drama to musicals to film noir. She never took a false step. — Eve Golden

If your life can hang from a chewing gum wrapper it can hang from anything in the book. It can hang from a bullet no bigger than a bean, or from a cigarette smoked in bed, or a bad breakfast that causes the doctor to sew the absorbent cotton inside you. From a slick tire tread or the hiccups or from kissing the wrong woman. Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this — Elliott Chaze

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

Don't make a career out of underestimating me." - Claire de Haven — James Ellroy

How the Hell is it we go to pick up Jenna Jameson and end up with the fucking chick from those Kill Bill movies? — Todd Morr

In the official police account, the plumber was shot and robbed on the street. Not true - guys stick together - the detective didn't want the victim's wife to know he was flagrante delicto with a prostitute when wounded. I didn't want her hurt or embarrassed either. She figured it out herself. I met her later, after their divorce, and she brought up the subject. The hospital returned her injured husband's garments. She was washing them when she realized that, although there were a number of bullet holes in his body, there were none in his clothes. — Edna Buchanan

It's hard to say goodbye for good at any time or any place. It's harder still to say it through a meshed wire. It crisscrossed his face into little diagonals, gave me only little broken-up molecules of it at a time. It stenciled a cold, rigid frame around every kiss. — Cornell Woolrich

The waitress came by with a pot of black coffee. She was a smallish woman, about forty, still had some of her looks left, but she had a hardness to her face. Money and bad men were the only things that left that much stone in a woman. I nudged my cup in her direction, and she served her purpose in life. — L. Joseph Shosty

I couldn't see why it shouldn't be my one hundred dollars. — Walter Mosley

No viticultural region in America has demonstrated as much progress in quality and potential for greatness as ... the Santa Barbara region, where the Burgundian varietals Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are planted in its cooler climates. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

The Italians were getting so accustomed to tragedies and disasters that their appetite for sensation was becoming jaded. — Timothy Holme

Foreign food isn't really my thing. I tasted whale once, and I was sick for a week. — Steen Langstrup

One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines. — Roger Ebert

I'd love to play a femme fatale in a film noir. I'm thinking of one of those roles that Lauren Bacall or Bette Davis might have played. What I wouldn't like is to suddenly find myself being cast, as many senior actresses seem to be, as the abbess in a convent. — Diana Quick

ON PLAYING back the 911 recording, it'd seem that Mrs. Stegman was more concerned that the man outside her apartment door was naked than that he had a big shotgun. — Warren Ellis

Of course, to be truly 'surveillance free' required unpredictability or its cousin, spontaneity. — Jeff Shear

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. — Jim Thompson

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

Just making the cement now, only takes five minutes."
"I did it in four once," Pauly whispered boastfully to Johnny, "but if I'm honest, I was never completely happy that it set properly."
"Who was it for?"
"Big Joe the Hammer."
"Oh, yeah," Johnny nodded. "Didn't I hear he was spotted in Vegas a few weeks back?"
Pauly nodded morosely.
"Yeah, like I said, I didn't think it had set properly. — Clare Havens

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

I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane. — Neko Case

Sweetly, albeit hoarsely and with a burr, the girl started singing something scarcely comprehensible, but, judging by the women's faces in the stalls, very seductive:
Guerlain, Chanel no 5, Mitsuko, Narcissus noir, evening dresses, cocktail dresses.. — Mikhail Bulgakov

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

Horror hostess, bondage goddess, Charles Addams cartoon comes to life, Vampire was every first-generation fanboy's wet dream. Scott Poole takes us on an unforgettable ride through the overlapping underworlds of B&D magazines, Hollywood noir, and early political liberation movements that inspired actress Maila Nurmi to challenge a postwar culture bent on stifling women's choices, bodies, and desires. This book is a subversive masterpiece. — Sheri Holman

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

Evans made himself their spokesman. "Charlie and Joe," he offered. "Remember us? We brought a friend back with us this time." Girls evidently didn't count in this little subdivision of the underworld; a miscalculation many a shady character has made. — Cornell Woolrich

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

The only thing altruism will get you here is a boot stomping on your head. — Henry Mosquera

Mee and Ow sat in the shade of a mango tree and were doing their make-up. Both of them wore gloves that reached all the way up to their elbows, to keep the tropical sun off their skins. They looked briefly at Maier, with the curiosity usually reserved for a passing dog. It was too early for professional enthusiasm. — Tom Vater

Pinot Noir country. My grape. The one varietal that truly enchants me, both stills and steals my heart with its elusive loveliness and false promises of transcendence. I loved her, and I would continue to follow her siren call until my wallet--or liver, whichever came first--gave out. — Rex Pickett

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. — Andrew Cotto

You ever f**k Susan here?" she said, her face almost touching mine.
"I'm impressed," I said. "The question is intrusive, annoying, coarse, and voyeuristic. That's quite a lot to get into a simple question. — Robert B. Parker