This perhaps could turn into yet another pointless www resource for someone who bizarrely wanted to research hard boiled fiction. It isn't now. But it may tell you a bit about my current reading habits.
Works are quoted using fair use laws (or so I hope), copyrights remain with the legitimate holders. Yeah, I ain't no steenken' lawyer.
From "Double Indemnity", by James M. Cain."...Dollar for dollar, there's bigger face coverage on accident than any other kind. No physical examination for accident. On that, all they want is the money, and there's many a man walking around today that's worth more to his loved ones dead than alive, only he don't know it yet."
From "The Underground Man", by Ross MacDonald."...And we headed inland for the Ventura Freeway. The early afternoon sun glared on the traffic, flashing unpredictably on windshields and chromium. I turned up the air conditioning.
`That feels good,' she said. Her presence beside me sustained an illusive feeling that there was an opening there into another time-track or dimension. It had more future than the world I knew, and not so bloody much traffic."
From "The Long Goodbye", by Raymond Chandler."`Mostly I just kill time,' he said, `and it dies hard. A little tennis, a little golf, a little swimming and horseback riding, and the exquisite pleasure of watching Sylvia's friends trying to hold out to lunch time before they start killing their hangovers.'
`The night you went to Vegas she said she didn't like drunks.'
He grinned crookedly.... `She meant drunks without money. With money they are just heavy drinkers. If they vomit in the lanai, that's for the butler to handle.'"
From "The Blue Hammer", by Ross MacDonald.""What's so much the matter with this house? Actually, if it were fixed up, it could be quite elegant. It probably was at one time.'
'The people in it are the matter,' I said. 'There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write eachother once a year...'"
From "The Far Side of the Dollar", by Ross MacDonald."`Are you a policeman, or what?'
`I used to be. Now I'm a what.'"
from "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett."`What's the rumpus?', I asked him.
`Don Wilson's gone to sit at the right hand of God, if God doesn't mind looking at bullet holes.'
`Who shot him?' I asked.
The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: `Somebody with a gun.'"
From "Black Money", by Ross Macdonald."It was the kind of situation I liked to avoid, or terminate quickly. As the century wore on - I could feel it wearing on - angry pointless encounters like this one tended more and more to erupt in violence."
from "The Big Sleep", by Raymond Chandler."I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch...There was a problem laid out on the [chess]board, a six-mover. I couldn't solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight.
...I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights."
from "The Chill", by Ross MacDonald."'Looking for someone?' she asked.
'Just waiting.'
'For Lefty or for Godot? It makes a difference.'
'For Lefty Godot. The pitcher.'
'The pitcher in the rye?'
'He prefers bourbon.'"
from "The Maltese Falcon", by Dashiell Hammett."The fat man looked shrewdly at Spade and asked: 'You're a close- mouthed man?'
Spade shook his head. 'I like to talk.'
'Better and better!' the fat man exclaimed. 'I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice.'"