Humphrey Bogart credited as playing...
Philip Marlowe
- 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.
- [last lines]
- Vivian: You've forgotten one thing: me.
- Philip Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
- Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Philip Marlowe: [to General Sternwood, after his daughter Carmen had thrown herself at him] You ought to wean her, she's old enough.