Noir Style Quotes & Sayings

Sighs united together are almost prayers; prayers coming from two hearts are almost acts of grace. — Alexandre Dumas

I can write about it if I am careful, if I keep it far enough away. — Kij Johnson

Today, as a result of the policy of Macmillan's Government, Great Britain presents in the United Nations the face of Pecksniff and in Katanga the face of Gradgrind. — Conor Cruise O'Brien

Billy Wilder is really is a heavy influence on Bound. We felt that film noir was a genre where you could create a really contained story. We wanted to be on a set as much as we could to get the kind of style level we were looking for. — Lana Wachowski

I've keep every comic I've bought in my life. I used to be obsessive about boarding and bagging them all. — David Dastmalchian

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

She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens. — Raymond Chandler

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction") — Francis M. Nevins Jr.

So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer."
"Me? How?"
"The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read."
"Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them."
She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at."
"That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops."
"Oh, nuts. — Raymond Chandler

You just hang in there, boy, hang in with that apprenticeship of yours, do you hear me? You are lucky they would even take someone like you. You're a child of the slums. A ragtag. On top of that, you're a whining piece of shit. Nobody will ever do anything for you. Do you understand what I'm saying? They'll let you starve to death, no problem. Nobody is going to cry on your grave.
Poul-Erik's Mother
The Informer by Steen Langstrup — Steen Langstrup

Think about this. The God of the universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you. — Timothy Keller

Lots of cops married nurses, Tallow knew. Nurses understood the life: murderous shiftwork, long stretches of boredom, sudden adrenaline spikes, blood everywhere. Tallow almost smiled as he followed his wincing partner into the apartment building. He made sure the door closed as silently as possible, and only then did he draw his firearm. — Warren Ellis

After being dry for a couple a weeks, three cocktails went down quicker than a boner in a busted rubber. — Brian Azzarello

It's a fine line we walk on 'Warehouse 13.' We really earn our dramatic moments, but our tongues are always firmly in our cheeks. If we take ourselves too seriously, we get into trouble. — Joanne Kelly

It's a terrific privilege to be able to see into somebody else's life. — Helen Garner

That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style. — Lawrence Kasdan

I am Alice in Wonderland', Josie thought. 'Watch me fall. — Jodi Picoult

I have always had a bad memory, as far back as I can remember. — Lewis Thomas

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

IT TOOK a conscious effort for Tallow to keep his hand off his gun as he walked up the apartment building's stairs. There was no threat here. He told himself that with every step. But every step held memory. — Warren Ellis

I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of ... What you don't know know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist ... If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway. — Robert Penn Warren

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

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

For me, the most attractive thing in a man is the ability to make me laugh. — Mollie King