The Long Goodbye

“You had to play the big scene,” he said coldly. “Stand on your rights, talk about the law. How ingenuous can a man get, Marlowe? A man like you who is supposed to know his way around. The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”

"Alcohol is like love," he said. "The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off."

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.