Noir Mystery Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

When I was making these damned pictures, I never knew about film noir. If you had asked me about it then, I probably would have pointed to something like Bill Wellman's The Ox Bow Incident, the best Western I ever saw and very much in the style of film noir I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross that defines what kind of drama it is. — Samuel Fuller

That was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity. — Lily Gardner

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. — Raymond Chandler

There are a few rules in investigations, and one is to never cringe at the person's appearance that you're about to pump for info. — Ruth Bainbridge

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

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

Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn't Lasker. This guy-'
She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say that he feels the darkness lift at the touch of her fingertips against his lips. But it shivers, and light bleeds in among the cracks. — Michael Chabon

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again. — Raymond Chandler

The biggest mistake you can make is thinking you know who you are. — J.P. Bloch

Heaven wouldn't be like this earth, this tormented earth ruled by evil forces that tossed humanity to and fro like a slow clown in a two-bit rodeo. — Joe LaFlam

I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we'd use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertips tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings. — Ed Lynskey

Tito snored away on the other bed. Out there, all around them to the last fringes of occupancy, were Toobfreex at play in the video universe, the tropic isle, the Long Branch Saloon, the Starship Enterprise, Hawaiian crime fantasies, cute kids in make-believe living rooms with invisible audiences to laugh at everything they did, baseball highlights, Vietnam footage, helicopter gunships and firefights, and midnight jokes, and talking celebrities, and a slave girl in a bottle, and Arnold the pig, and here was Doc, on the natch, caught in a low-level bummer he couldn't find a way out of, about how the Psychedelic Sixties, this little parenthesis of light, might close after all, and all be lost, taken back into darkness ... — Thomas Pynchon

In America, they have specialist mystery book stores with whole sections devoted to cat mysteries, golf mysteries, quilting mysteries. It's a hugely broad genre from the darkest noir to tales of a 19th-century vet who solves crimes, thanks to his talking cat. — Mark Billingham

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

She was a cute as a washtub. — Raymond Chandler

Miss Leary, do you mean to insinuate that I should go encouraging homo-sex-uality amongst these corpses? — William Lindsay Gresham

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

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

My mother's mother came to this country in the usual way--she got on a boat with other immigrants and sailed from Sicily. She wasn't one of them, however: neither tired nor poor or part of any huddled mass. Instead, she traveled alone, with her money in one sock and a knife in the other, coming to the new world with an old world motive--to murder the man that had left her for America. — Andrew Cotto

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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