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.
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.
Mark McPherson: I suspect nobody and everybody. I am strictly trying to get at the truth.
Rachel Cooper: Women are such durn fools.
Leona Stevenson: Henry! Henry! Save me.
Barton Keyes: Walter, you're all washed up.
George Loomis: You smell like a dime store. I know what that means.
Rose Loomis: Sure. I'm meeting somebody, just anybody handy, as long as he's a man! How 'bout the ticket seller himself? I could grab him on the way out, or one of the kids with the phonograph. Anybody suits me. Take your pick.
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.
Johnny: There's only two things in this world that a 'real man' needs: a cup of coffee and a good smoke.
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.
Eddie Willis: Money's not evil in and of itself. The purpose for which it's used is the determining factor.
Eddie Bartlett: One thing, Lloyd. They tell me your boss is building a case against our old friend, George.
Lloyd Hart: The case is already built, Eddie.
Eddie Bartlett: Yeah, well, you remember what he said would happen if you ever told what you knew about him?
Lloyd Hart: I remember.
Eddie Bartlett: So does he.
Cody Jarrett: To me, you're a face and a number, and let's keep it that way.