Hardboiled Quotes

“My friend and business partner, Gerald Peyton was 12 minutes late to the funeral. I’d reminded him it started at 2 p.m. “Yeah, yeah, Frank,” he said. “I’ll be there. Just be sure you make it.” Well, here I sat on my thumbs, and he was the no-show. He stopped at a bar and got sloshed, I thought.”
― Ed Lynskey, Death Car

“Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.”
― Richard Brautigan, در رؤیای بابل

“Gerald and Chet left town for the Peyton family reunion held this August below Tappahannock on the Northern Neck. Gerald invited me to go along, but I thanked my best friend and business partner. Shutting down things was bad for our bottom line. So, I stayed put and minded the office.”
― Ed Lynskey, Bent Halo

“There is a natural order. The way things are meant to be. An order that says that the good guys always win. That you die when it's your time, or you have it coming. That the ending is always happy, if only for someone else. Now at some point it became clear to us that our path had been chosen and we had nothing to offer the world. Our options narrowing down to petty crime or minimum wage. So, we stepped off the path, and went looking for the fortune that we knew was looking for us.”
― Christopher McQuarrie

“You’ll tell me. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to pay her off any more.”
“Why not?”
“She’s dead. So is your fat pansy. You can be dead, too, if you want.”
― Richard Stark, The Hunter

“Frank, have you seen today’s obits?” Gerald asked.
“Never look at them,” I replied. “I only read the comics, sports, and horoscopes.”
“Can’t you see I’m being serious?”
“Who bit the dust, then?”
― Ed Lynskey, Iceman

“The needle plunged into Richie’s skin like a lover.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he heard Alabama say, but his blood was cold now and his eyes were open but unseeing and a warmth was spreading up his bones from his toes as all tension in his body melted and seeped out his pores, all worries and fears and failures, and he knew that everything would be fine, perfectly, wonderfully fine, and that it had been silly to have ever worried at all.

I’ll be right behind you. The words repeating in his mind like an echo as he zoomed far away from this dirty motel room, from this dirty life.

See you soon.”
― Philip Elliott, Porno Valley

“Most men think the most difficult part of being a porn star is having sex for so long without ejaculating. They’re right but for the wrong reason. It’s having sex for so long and then ejaculating that’s the problem. Porn becomes a job like any other pretty quick. Then it’s all about maintaining the erection and being ready to fire on command. It’s not easy, believe me.”
― Philip Elliott, Porno Valley

“Greed is the most dependable of human weaknesses.”
― Philip Elliott, Porno Valley

“Nobody knows Los Angeles until they’ve been entranced by it, corrupted by it, cast out from it, and returned to it on their knees begging it to save them, and Richie knew Los Angeles. He knew it better than anyone. This time he would tame the beast and make it his own—this time he would win.”
― Philip Elliott, Porno Valley

“So, you're unhappy. Relax. No laws says you got to be happy.”
― Fred Zinnemann

“Now when I was a boy
My daddy sat me on his knee
And he told me
He told me many things
And he said sone
There's a lot of things in this world
You're gonna have no use for
And when you get blue
And you've lost all your dreams
There's nothin' like a campfire
And a can of beans”
― Tom Waits, The Blackrider : the casting of the magic bullets

“Now when I was a boy
My daddy sat me on his knee
And he told me
He told me many things
He said son
There's a lot of things in this world
You're gonna have no use for
And when you get blue
And you've lost all your dreams
There's nothin' like a campfire
And a can of beans”
― Tom Waits, The Blackrider : the casting of the magic bullets

“That was the grand bargain with evil. No wrong ever got righted, any more than a hangman’s rope was ever unknotted and used as a child’s swing.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Crackdown

“My goal is to live far outside of history as possible. History is a territory where mostly bad things happen to good people.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Crackdown

“I’ve heard that you’re in the pain business. I don’t like doing work for that kind of man,” said Vincent Calvino. Casey rolled his neck and a small cracking noise echoed from the bones inside. “If you worked only for people you liked, you wouldn’t cover your rent.”
― Christopher G. Moore

“It was now hard to believe how difficult it had once been to follow a person in Bangkok in a time before smart phones and social media. The new generation demanded to be followed online. It was in their digital blood. A small investment in a few specialized apps, and not even Sherlock Holmes in his most inspired opium dreams could have imagined the possibilities.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Crackdown

“Let me share what I’ve learned about Thai politics. Keep a distance from those doing a victory dance in the end zone unless you understand their game, how it’s scored and how many players each side has. If you can’t figure out the rules of the game, you won’t know when the game has started and when it’s over. Don’t put a bet on a game you don’t understand.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Crackdown

“The Bangkok Comfort Zone - that strip running between Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana - was a huge bank of ice, thick as a glacier. Only you had to be around years and years to see and feel the deep chill, and by the time you had it was too late, the glacier had already dragged you under.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Comfort Zone

“All yings are time rats, time bandits. Open their guts and what you find inside their digestive tract are the second and minutes of hundreds of men’s lives. Time cannibals. All those broken minute and hour hands just lying undigested in their stomach. It makes me want to drink.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Cold Hit: A Novel

“Misfits, con artists, evildoers all had business cards. It was enough to make any man a bona fide misanthrope.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Pattaya 24/7

“Asking if there is corruption in Thailand is like asking if there is dough inside a bakery. Pies and cakes don’t come from heaven and neither do deals and contracts.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Spirit House

“Why did I throw in with him? I suppose we Irish had a mule-headed loyalty baked into our DNA. I could rely on one bedrock truth. Gerald had my back, no matter how lopsided the odds turned. No truer measure of friendship existed to my way of thinking.”
― Ed Lynskey, Death Car

“It’s so easy it’s scary. Anybody—even you—can veer into a wrong orbit. Mine? Death Row is at the Three Toes Correctional Center, Virginia. But I got a raw deal, and I’ll holler it until my last breath.”
― ed lynskey, Wrong Orbits

“I loved the chase. Even Riveaux’s insane driving. Not just the velocity but the violence of it all. I liked speeding through red lights. Headfirst to the edge. Scraping enough skin to burn not bleed. Sleuthing was impossible sometimes, a doomed quest. It was godly, really. A gorgeous curse. Like a plague of locusts. Like kissing a married woman.”
― Margot Douaihy, Scorched Grace

“The February morning dawned cold as a brass madonna. I hadn’t worn my fleece coat, despite Dreema telling me to as I dashed out the door and made my getaway. Check the box for stubbornness.”
― Ed Lynskey, Roz

“CHAPTER 1:

My old car battery, dead as a turd, rode in the trunk of Dreema’s sedan. She’d told me to take it. I felt embarrassed to drive it, but I had no other way to pick up a new car battery.”
― Ed Lynskey, Traffic

“Kenneth Oscuro ripped off 13 cartons of cigarettes from a bodega. He then turned around and swapped them, even up, at a pawnshop for a 12-inch cutthroat razor. He made it his most prized possession.”
― Ed Lynskey, Outside the Wire: A Washington, D.C. Private Eye Novel

“I was enjoying my first full night’s sleep in days when my smartphone rang on the nightstand. Aw, for sweet Christ’s sake. Why hadn’t I changed its ringer setting?”
― Ed Lynskey, Stalker

“My twin goals are to entertain the audience and help them. My crime fiction is based on my longtime interest in true crime, and because of that, realism and logic are critical.”
― Jack R. Nerad, Only One Thing Stays the Same