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Noir Quotes

“(Calvino) had long ago accepted that his business model as a private investigator in Bangkok needed to incorporate spirit house offerings, lizard and gecko yammering, fortune tellers’ predictions of auspicious days and times, and Chinese reading of faces and head shapes before any decision would be made. . .the day soon came when they no longer seemed crazy.”

NoirMystery ThrillerExpats AdventureFortune TellersRangoonSpirit Houses
Book:Missing In Rangoon: Vincent Calvino Crime Novel
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“Panting and out of breath all he can get out is, “Body! Body!” “Mr. Ingly? Slow down! What’s the matter?” “Dead body!” Ingly, still panting and out of breath, sits down heavily in one of the cushy lobby chairs. “Didn’t you hear me? There’s a dead man…lying on the sidewalk…just around the corner! Call the police! My dog is there. I couldn’t catch him!””

FictionMysteryDramaSecretsFiction NovelMurder MysteryFiction WritingNoirNoir MysteryOrganised Crime
Book:Murder in Buckhead
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“I called and called until someone took pity and told me what was going on. She developed COVID-19 pneumonia and they put her on a ventilator.” My sister’s crying was bordering on hysteria. “Jack, she died this morning! Deloris is gone! I still can’t believe it!” I swerved, slammed on the brakes, and pulled the Ram over to the side of the highway.”

FictionMysteryDramaSecretsMurder MysteryFiction WritingNoirNoir MysteryOrganised Crime
Book:Deception: A Jack Ludefance Novel
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“A second red-orange spearhead leaps straight at O'Shaughnessy. The whole world seems to stand still. Then the gun behind it crashes, and there's a cataclysm of pain all over him, and a shock goes through him as if he ran head-on into a stone wall. A voice from the car says blurredly, while the ground rushes up to meet him, 'Finish him up, you guys! I'm getting so I don't trust their looks no more, no matter how stiff they act!' ("Jane Brown's Body")”

CrimeGunsNoirMobMobstersShotGunplay
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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“He's prowling back and forth like a lion with distemper now. There's a shiny streak down one side of his face. "I shouldn't have let her go ahead - I ought to be hung! Something's gone wrong. I can't stand this any more!" he says with a choked sound. "I'm starting now -" "But how are you -" "Spring for it and fire as I go if they try to stop me." And then as he barges out, the fat lady waddling solicitously after him, "Stay there; take it if she calls - tell her I'm on the way-" He plunges straight at the street-door from all the way back in the hall, like a fullback headed for a touchdown. That's the best way. Gun bedded in his pocket, but hand gripping it ready to let fly through lining and all. He slaps the door out of his way without slowing and skitters out along the building, head and shoulders defensively lowered. It *was* the taxi, you bet. No sound from it, at least not at this distance, just a thin bluish haze slowly spreading out around it that might be gas-fumes if its engine were turning; and at his end a long row of un-colored spurts - of dust and stone-splinters - following him along the wall of the flat he's tearing away from. Each succeeding one a half yard too far behind him, smacking into where he was a second ago. And they never catch up. ("Jane Brown's Body")”

CrimeGunNoirMobChaseAmbushMobstersGunplay
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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“The struggle doesn't last long; it's too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it's easy to pry the disabled one from around the racketeer's collar. Tereshko is trembling with his anger. 'Now him again!' he protests, as though at an injustice. 'All they do is die and then get up and walk around again! What'sa matter, you guys using spitballs for slugs? No, don't kick at him, that'll never do it - I think the guy has nine lives!' ("Jane Brown's Body")”

CrimeNoirMobsters
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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“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.”

CrimeNoirLife AdviceHardboiledNeo NoirThe Way Of The Gun
Author:Christopher McQuarrie
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“It wasn’t the first time Alabama had overdosed, but it had been the scariest. Though she would never tell Richie this, there had been a moment during the experience—impossible to say for how long; could have been a minute, could have been an hour—when she had died. At least, that’s how it had felt after she had clawed her way back from it. Death didn’t scare Alabama; in fact, sometimes, part of her yearned for it. What terrified her was how lonely she had felt, lost in oblivion. No one had greeted her at the borders of another realm, because that other realm was just another lie in a world full of them. Instead, there had been nothing at all in every direction, forever. Perfect darkness. The absence of everything.”

DeathAddictionAfterlifeDrugsAddictHeroinNoirDrug AddictOverdoseNeo Noir
Book:Porno Valley
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“How many diners should a man rob before he turns the gun on himself? The question whispered in Richie’s ear as he swallowed the last bite of pancake. He and Alabama had gotten the idea of stealing from diners when they caught Pulp Fiction at a four-year anniversary screening in the New Beverly Cinema in LA last year where they’d gone to shoot dope and drift among the neon haze of Hollywood glitz, thinking Shit, look how in love they are holding up that diner, that could be us. But a dozen diners later the charm had worn off and they’d returned to being just a couple junkie losers stuck in the small-time.”

MysteryCrimeThrillerCrime FictionNoirPulpTarantinoPulp FictionHardboiledNeo Noir
Book:Porno Valley
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“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.”

CrimeAddictionDrugsAddictHeroinDopeNoirDrug AddictHardboiledNeo Noir
Book:Porno Valley
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“I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse.”

RomanceCrimeCrime FictionNoirAdventure FictionDetective NovelHardboiled
Book:The Zinc Zoo
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“A woman with nothing to lose is merely dangerous; a woman with everything to protect is a reckoning." Maria Monday, Symphony of Lies "Some inherit money. Others inherit secrets worth killing for." Maria Monday, Symphony of Lies "For some, gazing into the abyss fosters strength, while others are consumed by it." Maria Monday, Symphony of Lies”

SuspenseLgbtqCrime FictionNoirPsychological ThrillerSwissStrong Female LeadPolitical IntrigueHigh StakesInternational Mystery
Book:Symphony Of Lies: A Psychological Thriller of Wealth, Power, and Lethal Secrets
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“It’s a work kid, a fucking lie. Our business is built on bullshit, every square inch of it. Call it deception, call it untruth, call it what you will. It is what it is. A work a dirty downright stinking fucking work. And whether it’s the dumb marks who pay to see this shit, or the dumb fucks who lace up every night to do it, they're all fair game, each and every one of em; suckers born to be fleeced for all their worth Anyone who says otherwise is probably working you twice as hard as I am. But hey, you already knew that, didn’t you? Welcome to the beast, that is, pro wrestling kid. Harvey Wallbanger Wrestling Promoter Extraordinaire”

SportsWrestlingWweNoir
Book:Real in Memphis: A Tale of Territory, Treachery and Turbulence (Wrestling Noir)
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“She kept on looking at me, and I knew that I didn’t imagine any of it. What she had proposed was real. The crime would happen, and if I crossed the street, I would be part of it. Maybe the good part at the end—the marriage part. But for sure, the bad part—the murder part. Why is it that the bad part of life is the only sure thing? –From 'Locked Room Mystery', Dark Thoughts & Other Stories”

MysteryNoirDepression Era
Book:Dark Thoughts & Other Stories
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“Who killed Thursby?’ Spade said: ‘I don’t know.’ Bryan rubbed his black eyeglass-ribbon between thumb and fingers and said knowingly: ‘Perhaps you don’t, but you certainly could make an excellent guess.’ ‘Maybe, but I wouldn’t.’ The District Attorney raised his eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t,’ Spade repeated. He was serene. ‘My guess might be excellent or it might be crummy, but Mrs Spade didn’t raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a District Attorney, an Assistant District Attorney, and a stenographer.’ ‘Why shouldn’t you, if you’ve nothing to conceal?’ ‘Everybody,’ Spade responded mildly, ‘has something to conceal.’ ‘And you have – ?’ ‘My guesses, for one thing.”

SecretsInvestigationMurder MysteryNoirSam Spade
Book:The Maltese Falcon
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“Quando alzai la testa, ormai fradicia, ero di nuovo davanti alla centrale. Non mi ero nemmeno accorto che la sigaretta si fosse spenta a causa della pioggia; solo quando mi fermai l’odore acre del mozzicone bagnato che avevo tra le labbra raggiunse pungente le narici, disgustandomi. Lo sputai lontano, come a volermi liberare di un qualcosa che mi assillava da anni, ma quell’amaro che sentivo in bocca non se ne andò, anzi, sembrò restare per ricordarmi il sapore della realtà. Lo stomaco mi si rivoltò dallo schifo. Guardai il mio riflesso in una pozzanghera agitata dall’acqua che cadeva, e per la prima volta sentii il peso di ciò che era diventata la mia vita: un qualcosa di cui non mi sarei mai potuto liberare. Mi resi conto che tutto questo avrebbe finito per consumarmi e dopo tanti anni mi sentii di nuovo solo.”

NoirLa Mela AvvelenataAnime AssassineLa Vendetta Del Cigno Nero
Book:Anime assassine: La vendetta del Cigno Nero
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“Marcus, sai quanto costa un singolo cartellone pubblicitario nella metropolitana di New York? Un patrimonio, ecco quanto costa. [...] E invece ormai basta suscitare l'interesse in un modo o nell'altro, creare il buzz, come si dice in gergo, far parlare di sé e contare sulle persone affiché parlino di te sui social-media, e così hai accesso ad uno spazio gratuito e illimitato. Da un capo all'altro del mondo, migliaia di persone senza neanche rendersene conto, provvedono a farti pubblicità su scala planetaria. Non è pazzesco? In pratica, gli utenti di Facebook sono degli uomini-sandwich che lavorano gratis. Sarebbe da idioti non approfittarne.”

ThrillerNoirGiallo
Book:La Vérité sur l'Affaire Harry Quebert
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