The Big Sleep Quotes

The Big Sleep was the first novel by Raymond Chandler. This hard-boiled detective novel was published in 1939. With this work, Chandler was forging new paths in literature. Here are a few quotes from the novel.

• "I was wearing my powder-blue suit... I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars."
  - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
  
  
• "Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless. Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies. Neither of them has anymore moral sense than a cat. Neither have I. No Sternwood ever had."
  - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
  
  
• "She's a grifter, shamus. I'm a grifter. We're all grifters. So we sell each other out for a nickel."
  - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
  
  
• "Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights."
  - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
  
  
• "You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was."
  - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep