Sternwood
You are looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life - crippled, paralyzed in both legs, very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider. The orchids are an excuse for the heat. Do you like orchids?
Marlowe
Not particularly.
Sternwood
Nasty things! Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, and their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
