Carmen Sternwood: You're not very tall are you?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.
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.
Rachel Cooper: Women are such durn fools.
Leona Stevenson: Henry! Henry! Save me.
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.
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.
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.
Philip Marlowe: Now this is beginning to make sense, in a screwy sort of a way. I get dragged in and get money shoved at me. I get pushed out and get money shoved at me. Everybody pushes me in, everybody pushes me out. Nobody wants me to DO anything. OK, put a check in the mail. I cost a lot not to do anything. I get restless. Throw in a trip to Mexico.
Nick Benko: Don't fight it, Eddie! What are you trying to do, hold onto your self-respect? Did your self-respect help you hold your job? Did your self-respect give you a new column?
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.