The Long Goodbye
CRITIQUE | QUOTES | MARLOWE AT THE MOVIES
First edition, 1953First publication
1953
Literary form
Novel
Genres
Literary, crime, mystery
Writing language
English
Author's country
United States
Length
Approx. 131,000 words
Notable lines
The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Roll-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox's left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other.
— First lines
She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.
"Your secret is safe with me. I'm not telling it to anybody but the people I know."
Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.
Idle Valley was a perfect place to live. Perfect. Nice people with nice homes, nice cars, nice horses, nice dogs, possibly even nice children. But all a man named Marlowe wanted from it was out. And fast.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
I never saw any of them again—except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.
— Last lines
CRITIQUE | QUOTES | MARLOWE AT THE MOVIES
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