# Quote — Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

> The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.

- Author: [Raymond Chandler](https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler.md)
- Book: [The Big Sleep](https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-big-sleep.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler#The_Big_Sleep_(1939)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-big-sleep/the-main-hallway

## More from this book

> Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners."
>
> "I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-big-sleep/her-hot-black.md)

> What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-big-sleep/what-did-it-matter.md)

> A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/raymond-chandler/the-big-sleep/a-few-locks.md)