- Vivian: I don't like your manners!
- Marlowe: I'm not crazy about yours. I didn't ask to see you. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like 'em myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings, and I don't mind your ritzing me, or drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.
- Philip Marlowe: My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains! You know, you're the second guy I've met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.
- Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is, what makes them run.
- Marlowe: Find out mine?
- Vivian: I think so.
- Marlowe: Go ahead.
- Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
- Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
- Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
- Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
- Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.
- Taxi Driver: If you can use me again sometime, call this number.
- Philip Marlowe: Day and night?
- Taxi Driver: Uh, night's better. I work during the day.
- Eddie Mars: Convenient, the door being open when you didn't have a key, eh?
- Philip Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it? By the way, how'd you happen to have one?
- Eddie Mars: Is that any of your business?
- Philip Marlowe: I could make it my business.
- Eddie Mars: I could make your business mine.
- Philip Marlowe: Oh, you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.
- General Sternwood: Do you like orchids?
- Philip Marlowe: Not particularly.
- General Sternwood: Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. Their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
- [last lines]
- Vivian: You've forgotten one thing: me.
- Philip Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
- Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.
- Vivian: So you're a private detective? I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?
- Philip Marlowe: I'm not very tall either. Next time I'll come on stilts, wear a white tie and carry a tennis racket.
- Vivian: I doubt if even that would help.
- Vivian: What will your first step be?
- Philip Marlowe: The usual one.
- Vivian: I didn't know there was a usual one.
- Philip Marlowe: Well, sure there is. It comes complete with diagrams, on page 47 of 'How to be a Detective in 10 Easy Lessons,' correspondence school text-book and, uh, your father offered me a drink.
- Vivian: You must've read another one on how to be a comedian.
- Norris: Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?
- Philip Marlowe: No, just having fun trying to guess what they are.
- Carmen Sternwood: You're cute. I like you.
- Philip Marlowe: Yeah, what you see's nothing, I got a Balinese dancing girl tattooed across my chest.
- Marlowe: You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.
- Philip Marlowe: [to General Sternwood, after his daughter Carmen had thrown herself at him] You ought to wean her, she's old enough.
- General Sternwood: You knew him too?
- Philip Marlowe: Yes, in the old days, when he used to run rum out of Mexico and I was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.
- General Sternwood: My respects to you, sir. Few men ever swapped more than one shot with Sean Regan.
- [in a bookstore]
- Philip Marlowe: You do sell books, hmm?
- Agnes Lowzier: What do those look like, grapefruit?
- Philip Marlowe: Well, from here they look like books.
- Agnes Lowzier: Is Harry there?
- Philip Marlowe: Yeah, yeah, he's here.
- Agnes Lowzier: Put him on, will you?
- Philip Marlowe: He can't talk to you.
- Agnes Lowzier: Why?
- Philip Marlowe: Because he's dead.
- Philip Marlowe: Hm.
- General Sternwood: What does that mean?
- Philip Marlowe: [laughing] It means, "Hm!"
- Agnes Lowzier: A half-smart guy, that's what I always draw. Never once a man who's smart all the way around the course. Never once.
- Philip Marlowe: I hurt you much, sugar?
- Agnes Lowzier: You and every other man I've ever met.
- Vivian: [Vivian is leaving Mr. Marlowe's office] Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe.
- Philip Marlowe: [When Vivian tries to open the door the deadbolt is locked] Well, it wasn't intentional.
- Vivian: [Vivian unlocks the deadbolt, turns and smiles] Try it sometime.
- [Vivian leaves and closes the door behind her]
- Philip Marlowe: You made a mistake. Mrs. Rutledge didn't want to see me.
- Norris: I'm sorry, sir. I make many mistakes.
- Philip Marlowe: I know he was a good man at whatever he did. No one was more pleased than I when I heard you had taken him on as your... whatever he was.
- Librarian: [Marlowe returns book to front desk] Did you find what you wanted?
- Philip Marlowe: Yes, thanks.
- Librarian: You know, you don't look like a man who'd be interested in first editions.
- Philip Marlowe: Well, I collect blondes in bottles, too.
- General Sternwood: You may smoke, too. I can still enjoy the smell of it. Nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. You're 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.
- General Sternwood: If I seem a bit sinister as a parent, Mr. Marlowe, it's because my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian hypocrisy. I need hardly add that any man who has lived as I have and who indulges, for the first time, in parenthood, at my age, deserves all he gets.
- General Sternwood: I assume they have all the usual vices, besides those they've invented for themselves.
- Philip Marlowe: Thanks for the drink, general.
- General Sternwood: I enjoyed your drink as much as you did, sir.
- Philip Marlowe: You the guy that's been tailing me?
- Harry Jones: Yeah, the name's Jones. Harry Jones. I want to see you.
- Philip Marlowe: Swell. Did you want to see those guys jump me?
- Harry Jones: I didn't care one way or the other.
- Philip Marlowe: You could've yelled for help.
- Harry Jones: If a guy's playing a hand, I let him play it. I'm no kibitzer.
- Philip Marlowe: You got brains.
- Agnes Lowzier: Well, so long, copper. Wish me luck. I got a raw deal.
- Philip Marlowe: Hey, your kind always does.
- [making a crank call]
- Philip Marlowe: I can do what? Where? Oh no, I wouldn't like that. Neither would my daughter.
- [hangs up]
- Philip Marlowe: I hope the sergeant never traces that call.
- Philip Marlowe: You wanna tell me now?
- Vivian: Tell you what?
- Philip Marlowe: What it is you're trying to find out. You know, it's a funny thing. You're trying to find out what your father hired me to find out, and I'm trying to find out why you want to find out.
- Vivian: You could go on forever, couldn't you? Anyway it'll give us something to talk about next time we meet.
- Philip Marlowe: Among other things.
- Vivian: Do you always think you can handle people like, uh, trained seals?
- Philip Marlowe: Uh-huh. I usually get away with it too.
- Vivian: How nice for you.
- Philip Marlowe: How'd you happen to pick out this place?
- Vivian: Maybe I wanted to hold your hand.
- Philip Marlowe: Oh, that can be arranged.
- Lash Canino: What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a gun before? What do you want me to do, count three like they do in the movies?
- Philip Marlowe: How bout a cup of coffee, Bernie?
- Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls: Uh-uh. I can't afford to be seen with you.
- Philip Marlowe: Oh, Eddie, you don't have anybody watching me, do you? Tailing me in a gray Plymouth coupe, maybe?
- Eddie Mars: No, why should I?
- Philip Marlowe: Well, I can't imagine, unless you're worried about where I am all the time.
- Eddie Mars: I don't like you that well.
- Philip Marlowe: Let me do the talking, angel. I don't know yet what I'm going to tell them. It'll be pretty close to the truth.