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The Big Sleep

Critique • Quotes • Philip Marlowe at the movies

The Big SleepFirst edition
Publication details ▽ Publication details △

First publication
1939

Literary form
Novel

Genres
Literary, crime, mystery

Writing language
English

Author's country
United States

Length
Approx. 72,000 words

Notable lines

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

— First lines

Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.

 

"I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings."

 

"Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten—when Larry Cobb was sober."

 

His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too...would be sleeping the big sleep.

 

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again.

— Last lines

 

Critique • Quotes • Philip Marlowe at the movies