Billy Rolfe You're not a detective, Marlowe, you're a slot machine. You'll do anything for six bits.
Farewell, My Lovely quotes
Billy Rolfe
Frances Amthor
I think you're a very stupid person. You look stupid, you're in a stupid business, and you're on a stupid case.
I get it. I'm stupid.
Lt. Nulty [during an interrogation]
All right, Marlowe, let's start again, huh? From the beginning.
I've told you twice. Now, why don't I make it easy on all of us and tell you what you want to hear? This fairy hired me to exchange a necklace for cash for a friend of his. We drove out to the woods. I shot him. I buried the fifteen grand. I drove my car back to his place, walked fifteen miles back to the woods, knocked myself on the head and then called the police.
Moose Malloy You a private Dick?
No. I'm your fairy godmother.
What was she like... this Velma?
Moose Malloy Cute... cute as lace pants.
[looking at the dead bodies of Moose and Velma]
Moose never would have hurt her. It didn't matter to him that she hadn't written in 6 years. It didn't matter that she turned him in for a reward. The big lug loved her... and if he was still alive... it wouldn't matter to him that she'd pumped 3 bullets into him... What a world.
[on being shaken by the lapels]
Now wait a minute. I've been slapped, scratched, punched, knocked unconscious, drugged, and shot at, looking for your Velma, so quit trying to make a milkshake out of my insides, will you?
[voiceover, opening lines]
This past spring was the first that I felt tired and realized I was growing old. Maybe it was the rotten weather we'd had in L.A. Maybe the rotten cases I'd had. Mostly chasing a few missing husbands and then chasing their wives once I found them, in order to get paid. Or maybe it was just the plain fact that I am tired and growing old.
[voiceover, to himself]
You've been beaten up, slapped, shot full of hop until you were as crazy as two waltzing mice; now let's see you do something really tough, like getting up.
[voiceover]
I sparred with the night clerk for a couple of minutes, but it was like trying to open a sardine can after you broke off the metal lip. There was something about Abraham Lincoln's picture that loosened him up.
[voiceover]
It was one of those transient motels, something between a fleabag and a dive.
[voiceover]
The house itself wasn't much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler building.