These are a few of my favorite excerpts from some of my favorite noir and cyberpunk noir writers. Post 'em if you got 'em. Movie quotes are welcome as well.
Blackmailers don't shoot - Raymond Chandler
The man in the powder-blue suit - which wasn't powder-blue under the lights of
the Club Bolivar - was tall, with wide-set gray eyes, a thin nose, a jaw of stone.
He had a rather sensitive mouth. His hair was crisp black, ever so faintly touched
with gray, as if by an almost diffident hand. His clothes fitted him as though
they had a soul of their own, not just a doubtful past. His name happened
to be Mallory.
--
The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler
There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn't quite. Nothing can.
--
A low-swung foreign speedster with no top drifted into the parking lot and a man got out of it and used the dash lighter on a long cigarette. He was wearing a pullover check shirt, yellow slacks, and riding boots. He strolled off trailing clouds of incense, not even bothering to look towards the Rolls-Royce. He probably thought it was corny. At the foot of the steps up to the terrace he paused to stick a monocle in his eye.
--
The girl said with a nice burst of charm: "I have a wonderful idea, darling. Why don't we just take a cab to your place and get your convertible out? It's such a wonderful night for a run up the coast to Montecito. I know some people there who are throwing a dance around the pool.
The white-haired lad said politely: "Awfully sorry, but I don't have it any more. I was compelled to sell it." From his voice and articulation you wouldn't have known he had had anything stronger than orange juice to drink.
"Sold it, darling? How do you mean?" She slid away from him along the seat but her voice slid away a lot farther than that.
"I mean I had to," he said. "For eating money.
"Oh, I see." A slice of spumoni wouldn't have melted on her now.
--
The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.
--
"What's your name?"
"Reilly," I said. "Doghouse Reilly."
"That's a funny name." She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.
"Are you a prizefighter?" she asked, when I didn't.
"Not exactly. I'm a sleuth."
--
Farewell My Lovely Raymond Chandler
It was a warm day, almost the end of March, and I stood outside the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian's. A man was looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. He was about ten feet away from me. His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers.
--
The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down-- from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.
--
Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett
I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.
--
Altered Carbon Richard K. Morgan
Coming back from the dead can be rough.
In the Envoy Corps they teach you to let go before storage. Stick it in
neutral and float. It's the first lesson and the trainers drill it into
you from day one. Hard-eyed Virginia Vidaura, dancer's body poised
inside the shapeless corps coveralls as she paced in front of us in the
induction room. Don't worry about anything, she said, and you'll be
ready for it. A decade later, I met her again in a holding pen at the
New Kanagawa Justice Facility. She was going down for eighty to a
century; excessively armed robbery and organic damage. The last thing
she said to me when they walked her out of the cell was don't worry,
kid, they'll store it. Then she bent her head to light a cigarette, drew
the smoke hard into lungs she no longer gave a damn about, and set off
down the corridor as if to a tedious briefing. From the narrow angle of
vision afforded me by the cell gate, I watched the pride in that walk
and I whispered the words to myself like a mantra.
--
Neuromancer William Gibson
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Blackmailers don't shoot - Raymond Chandler
The man in the powder-blue suit - which wasn't powder-blue under the lights of
the Club Bolivar - was tall, with wide-set gray eyes, a thin nose, a jaw of stone.
He had a rather sensitive mouth. His hair was crisp black, ever so faintly touched
with gray, as if by an almost diffident hand. His clothes fitted him as though
they had a soul of their own, not just a doubtful past. His name happened
to be Mallory.
--
The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler
There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn't quite. Nothing can.
--
A low-swung foreign speedster with no top drifted into the parking lot and a man got out of it and used the dash lighter on a long cigarette. He was wearing a pullover check shirt, yellow slacks, and riding boots. He strolled off trailing clouds of incense, not even bothering to look towards the Rolls-Royce. He probably thought it was corny. At the foot of the steps up to the terrace he paused to stick a monocle in his eye.
--
The girl said with a nice burst of charm: "I have a wonderful idea, darling. Why don't we just take a cab to your place and get your convertible out? It's such a wonderful night for a run up the coast to Montecito. I know some people there who are throwing a dance around the pool.
The white-haired lad said politely: "Awfully sorry, but I don't have it any more. I was compelled to sell it." From his voice and articulation you wouldn't have known he had had anything stronger than orange juice to drink.
"Sold it, darling? How do you mean?" She slid away from him along the seat but her voice slid away a lot farther than that.
"I mean I had to," he said. "For eating money.
"Oh, I see." A slice of spumoni wouldn't have melted on her now.
--
The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.
--
"What's your name?"
"Reilly," I said. "Doghouse Reilly."
"That's a funny name." She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.
"Are you a prizefighter?" she asked, when I didn't.
"Not exactly. I'm a sleuth."
--
Farewell My Lovely Raymond Chandler
It was a warm day, almost the end of March, and I stood outside the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian's. A man was looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. He was about ten feet away from me. His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers.
--
The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down-- from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.
--
Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett
I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.
--
Altered Carbon Richard K. Morgan
Coming back from the dead can be rough.
In the Envoy Corps they teach you to let go before storage. Stick it in
neutral and float. It's the first lesson and the trainers drill it into
you from day one. Hard-eyed Virginia Vidaura, dancer's body poised
inside the shapeless corps coveralls as she paced in front of us in the
induction room. Don't worry about anything, she said, and you'll be
ready for it. A decade later, I met her again in a holding pen at the
New Kanagawa Justice Facility. She was going down for eighty to a
century; excessively armed robbery and organic damage. The last thing
she said to me when they walked her out of the cell was don't worry,
kid, they'll store it. Then she bent her head to light a cigarette, drew
the smoke hard into lungs she no longer gave a damn about, and set off
down the corridor as if to a tedious briefing. From the narrow angle of
vision afforded me by the cell gate, I watched the pride in that walk
and I whispered the words to myself like a mantra.
--
Neuromancer William Gibson
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.