Carmen Sternwood: You're not very tall are you?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.
Ida: Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young.
Mark McPherson: I suspect nobody and everybody. I am strictly trying to get at the truth.
Rachel Cooper: Women are such durn fools.
Herbie Hawkins: Well, if I was gonna kill you, I wouldn't do a dumb thing like hitting you on the head. First of all, I don't like the fingerprint angle. Of course, I could always wear gloves. Press your hands against the pipe after you were dead and make you look like a suicide. Except it don't seem hardly likely that you'd beat yourself to death with a club. I'd murder you so it didn't look like murder.
Henry Stevenson: Besides, what does a dame like you want with a guy like me?
Dancin' Kid: I like you, Guitar Man. How'd you like to work for me?
Johnny: I wouldn't.
Dancin' Kid: Now all of a sudden I don't like you.
Johnny: Now that makes me real sad.
George Loomis: Too bad, they can't play it for you now, Rose.
Barton Keyes: Walter, you're all washed up.
Johnny Clay: You like money. You've got a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart.
Bruno Anthony: I have a theory that you should do everything before you die.
Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big! It's the pictures that got small.
Police Inspector Nakajima: Bad luck either makes a man or destroys him. Are you gonna let it destroy you? Depending how you take it, bad luck can be a big break.
David Sutton: My liver rushes in where angels fear to tread.
Harry Lime: What did you want me to do? Be reasonable. You didn't expect me to give myself up... 'It's a far, far better thing that I do.' The old limelight. The fall of the curtain. Oh, Holly, you and I aren't heroes. The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories.
Quinlan: Come on, read my future for me.
Tanya: You haven't got any.
Quinlan: Hmm? What do you mean?
Tanya: Your future's all used up.
Cora Smith: It's too bad Nick took the car.
Frank Chambers: Even if it was here we couldn't take it, unless we'd want to spend the night in jail. Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing a man's car, that's larceny.
Verna Jarrett: I'd look good in a mink coat, honey.
Cody Jarrett: You'd look good in a shower curtain.
Tom: What is the Maltese Falcon made of, to make it so special?
Spade: The stuff that dreams are made of.