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5 of the Best Quotes From ‘The Big Sleep,’ for Living Your Best Bookish Life

Potent quotables from Raymond Chandler’s knight errant, Philip Marlowe

Classic though the Bogart film is — the book’s still better.

The book that launched a thousand parodies, it’s almost single-handedly responsible for the idea of the hardboiled private eye.

Was it actually that good?

At the time, it wasn’t the first to try out the hardboiled detective story. It was a staple of the pulp era.

But Raymond Chandler…he created something magical in the Venetian blind-shadowed, scotch-soaked world of Philip Marlowe.

One of my guiltiest pleasures, I picked up the annotated edition this year. It meant I got to meet Philip Marlowe again.

Chandler wrote Marlowe as a guy out of time. He’s a throwback to the romantic knights of the Victorian age, in a world that’s all too real.

With a liver of steel and soul of a poet, he wanders 1940s L.A., getting into and out of scraps on his search for the truth.

If you’re ever wandering out of time and place, and feel shadows creeping up on you — keep these quotes from The Big Sleep handy.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

The nicer the neighborhood, the more skeletons in the closets.

Appearances can be deceiving. A little bit of cynicism and paranoia can go a long way. A beautiful knife still has a very sharp edge.

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

Marlowe has a strange sense of Zen about him. He is who he is, the world is what it is, and it doesn’t bother him.

Chandler’s poster child for noir just gets up every day, tries to survive, does his job, and goes home. It’s a simple life.

Being unapologetically himself is what helps this PI stand strong against a world that goes on with or without him.

I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.

The beauty in Chandler’s prose are the layers. This one is talking both about a game of chess Marlowe’s playing, and about his place in the world.

He knows his job — being a professional snoop — isn’t always a noble one.

Despite it being a dirty job, he faces it with dignity and honor.

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll’s house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.

The thing the parodies of The Big Sleep don’t usually get, are these kinds of moments. Marlowe realizing how overdramatic his own thoughts are.

He knows he’s a little much at times — and probably mourns that too, on those long winter evenings.

But he never thinks too much of himself. He’s just a regular guy, doing a sometimes-interesting job.

It’s his quick wit, humility, and courage that let him take on the world.

I didn’t mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a family. Not much: a few books, pictures, radio, chessmen, old letters, stuff like that. Nothing. Such as they were, they had all my memories.

It’s the memories that really define Philip Marlowe — and all of us.

Wherever we keep ours, that’s where home is.

Be it not-so-fancy, there’s no place like it.

This annotated edition is my fave edition (and I have a few). Put together by editor Owen Hill and Black Lizard Press, it gives you a classic story — and the story behind the story. And pictures.

You can pick up a copy at Bookshop.

If you’d rather have just the story, there’s also a very nice special edition they publish.

And if you want to check out more of the Marloweverse: Everyman’s Library puts out a 3-in-1 set.

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