Best 155 quotes in «noir quotes» category

It's only crazy if we fail.

It's time to end the brain drain and move to brain gain. It's time for a great mind of Nigeria to return home. You're the mind we need, Doctor.

IT TOOK a conscious effort for Tallow to keep his hand off his gun as he walked up the apartment building’s stairs. There was no threat here. He told himself that with every step. But every step held memory.

It was a sort of car that seemed to have a faculty for motion with an absolute lack of any accompanying sound whatsoever. This was probably illusory; it must have been, internal combustion engines being what they are, tires being what they are, brakes and gears being what they are, even raspy street-surfacing being what it is. Yet the illusion outside the hotel entrance was a complete one. Just as there are silencers that, when affixed to automatic hand-weapons, deaden their reports, so it was as if this whole massive car body were encased in something of that sort. For, first, there was nothing out there, nothing in sight there. Then, as though the street-bed were water and this bulky black shape were a grotesque gondola, it came floating up out of the darkness from nowhere. And then suddenly, still with no sound whatsoever, there it was at a halt, in position. It was like a ghost-car in every attribute but the visual one. In its trancelike approach and halt, in its lightlessness, in its enshrouded interior, which made it impossible to determine (at least without lowering one's head directly outside the windows and peering in at nose-tip range) if it were even occupied at all, and if so by whom and by how many. You could visualize it scuttling fleetly along some overshadowed country lane at dead of night, lightless, inscrutable, unidentifiable, to halt perhaps beside some inky grove of trees, linger there awhile undetected, then glide on again, its unaccountable errand accomplished without witness, without aftermath. A goblin-car that in an earlier age would have fed folklore and rural legend. Or, in the city, you could visualize it sliding stealthily along some warehouse-blacked back alley, curving and squirming in its terrible silence, then, as it neared the mouth and would have emerged, creeping to a stop and lying there in wait, unguessed in the gloom. Lying here in wait for long hours, like some huge metal-cased predatory animal, waiting to pounce on its prey. Sudden, sharp yellow spurts of fangs, and then to whirl and slink back into anonymity the way it came, leaving the carcass of its prey huddled there and dead. Who was there to know? Who was there to tell? ("The Number's Up")

I’ve just been wandering the streets at night. If I came by a German soldier out alone, I would follow him, shove the pistol to the back of his head, and shoot. Once, I even did two at the same time, but they were really drunk.” Poul-Erik aka ‘Willy’ The Informer by Steen Langstrup

I've always thought hard-boiled detective novels an American art form. At their best, they're more than who-dun-its or thrillers, they're vehicles for a writer's observations about culture, politics, philosophy, music, history and a time or a place. Or life, it’s ownself. When you read James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett or James Lee Burke, their stories are always about far more than good guys chasing bad guys. That’s the kind of book I wanted to write. Still do.

Nobody saw what happened next, or else nobody admitted to it. A couple of people said they saw the Kid stand up, turn around quickly, and sit down again. But neither of those people was there at the time. The teacher had turned her back to the class and was writing on the board. She heard something and looked around. Gordon Ritchie was coming towards her, reaching for her, whimpering. The Kid’s pen was sticking out of Gordon’s face. The Kid had stabbed him with it, stabbed him so hard that it pierced his cheek and impaled his tongue. The teacher backed away from Gordon, trying to take in what she was seeing. Bubbles of blood were coming out of his mouth. Some of the children ran out of the room. Others screamed or cried. The Kid just sat at his desk, as though there had been no interruption to the class.

May they run free forever and grow back their limbs!

Miss Leary, do you mean to insinuate that I should go encouraging homo-sex-uality amongst these corpses?

I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth.

Looking back, I know that the man possessed no gift of prophecy; he simply worked to assure his own future, while I skated uncertainly toward mine. It was his flat-voiced "Cherchez la femme" that still haunts me. Because our partnership was nothing but a bungling road to the Dahlia. And in the end, she was to own the two of us completely.

Lots of cops married nurses, Tallow knew. Nurses understood the life: murderous shiftwork, long stretches of boredom, sudden adrenaline spikes, blood everywhere. Tallow almost smiled as he followed his wincing partner into the apartment building. He made sure the door closed as silently as possible, and only then did he draw his firearm.

Luis found all this very exciting. He had enthusiasm for myths, legends, bad omens, bad weather, supernatural happenings and inexplicable events. His passion for superstitions and doomsaying drove his other family members crazy. He didn’t often meet curious strangers with whom he could share his fantastic tales.

No me atrevería a decir que te equivocas, aunque tampoco podría darte la razón.

Normally, I don't take to drinking so early in the morning, but I bend the rules when I get my ass kicked before sunrise."--Thomas Morelli

No whiskey, no religion, nothing.

One time, she waddled out and showed Peg her bandages from her last suicide attempt, which invokes sympathy in some, but usually makes me imagine someone holding out a pile of dog shit and saying "Look what I almost stepped in!

One of the two owners, the man who had been sitting in the front room, was stretched out in there asleep, stockinged-toes pointed at the ceiling, one hand backed defensively against his eyes to ward off the light. He'd taken off his vest and shoes, and that strap that wasn't straight enough to be a suspender-strap was dangling now around one of the knobs at the foot of the bed. It ended in a holster, with a black, cross-grained slab of metal protruding from it. Turner couldn't take his eyes off it, while the long seconds that to him were minutes toiled by. That meant out, that black slab, more surely than any door. He had to have it. More than that, it meant a continuance of out, for so long as he had it. And he wanted out with all the desperate longing of all trapped things, blindly scratching, clawing their way through a maze to the open. To the open where the equal chance is.

one of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the darkness. He was a trombone player in a matching band in a world somewhere else.

Restai con lo sguardo fisso a osservare quella figura che si allontanava, fino a sparire; finché non mi accorsi che, nel punto dove stavo guardando, ormai non c’era più nessuno.

Rachel drank some more bourbon. “What I am trying to do,” she said, “is to thank you. And to say it as genuinely as I can. I do thank you. I will remember as long as I live when you came into the room and got me, and I will always remember when you killed them, and I was glad, and you came and we put our arms around each other. And I will always remember that you cried.

Retirement had seemed like the best way not to die, but the adrenaline had gone the day I threw in the towel and it never returned. You have your books and your movies, your daydreams and your moments in the sun, but none of those can save you any more than irony can.

Pulling out onto the highway I noticed a stone pillar commemorating the Donner Party. They were a true testament to the American spirit, push forward at all costs and eat the dead when necessary. Wasn’t that the American dream in a nutshell.

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.

Quote taken from Chapter 1: That's the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She's a keeper." He let that part gel in me. "Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham.

She killed to get the dream she wanted, then found out it didn't want her back.

[She] had a habit of putting things in that way, as though she had accidently set your house on fire and had no choice now but to stand back and watch it burn.

She just stood there and looked at the empty highway, and you could almost tell how bored she was by the way she stood.

She's dead. So is your fat pansy. You can be dead, too, if you want.

She looked hot enough to catch fire, but too lazy to do anything but just lie there and smoke.

The Filipino houseboy was conscious now

She wore a loose bathrobe that covered up a body that would have won first prize in a beauty contest for cement blocks.....She had a voice that made pearl harbour sound like a lullaby.

The biggest mistake you can make is thinking you know who you are.

The dark clouds make the black sea. (Les nuages noirs - Font la mer noire)

She wasn't just a B-girl, she was carrying the whole ugly world in her eyes.

Shouldering the duffel bag with the Marine Corps bulldog, Old Man knocked Jan's photo off the bed table. He turned to stone staring down at the photo. His face then splintered into hurt. Tears seeped into his eyes. He grappled for the nearest bedpost and slumped forward on extended arms. His shoulders jerked and head sagged a little while his heart broke. Old Man cried the mute cry of men of his generation.

Sometimes in life you meet a femme fatale and you can refuse them nothing they treat you like dirt but even the dirt they dish out has a taste you can resist? From the novel 'Adventures of a Dark Duke: The Pin

Taking my drink, I moved around the bar to her. Her smile was a little crooked as I sat down. I guessed it had been a wet night for platinum blondes.

That crap about doing something with your life are luxury problems. People like us have to play by a different rules.” #ShadowofSadd #Books

That pistol I gave you is a piece of crap. You can’t hit anything with it, not at that distance.” Staring at her with tears in his blinking eyes, he says, “I did.” Conversation between Alis K and Willy The Informer

The bed lets out a slight gasp of air from the mattress like an old cat fart, but it looks like she’s too caught up in herself to notice.

The clouds were still bunched up in the sky like a gang on a street corner, and it looked to me like they had the sun pretty effectively intimidated.

The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself. Michel de Montaigne

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction")

The hotel was guest-friendly with hourly rates and had enough room to swing a cat, if it were a small cat and you wanted to swing it.

The Italians were getting so accustomed to tragedies and disasters that their appetite for sensation was becoming jaded.

Their encounter had formed a strange chemical bond. Mitch, a hardened ruffian, had opened up the prison of his soul to her. And Kika, who led a bitterly puritanical existence, had started to make love to him on her sofa.

The lady in the liquor store sold me a fifth of whiskey and the landlord’s name without taking her eyes off the book she was reading.

Then his eye was in my mouth, a string of bloody nerves dangling from my lips. I couldn’t believe how easily it came out. Even the feel and taste of it wouldn’t have convinced me if I hadn’t been looking straight into his fountaining red socket as I listened to him scream.

The only thing he likes better than a nice juicy homicide is a sirloin steak smothered with onions.