“Lilac makes on occasion a sound between a sniff and a snort that's as damning as all improper words in the language and, like them, can't be written down.”

“One of the pleasant things about you is that you're entirely predictable because you never learn. I've told you before, and I'm telling you again, that people who murder other people are dangerous to be around. You're charming, my dear, and sometimes you act like an awful fool. Someday it'll be you that doesn't wake up at the foot of some stone steps. Those are terms a first-grader ought to be able to understand--won't you see what you can make of them?”

“If he hadn't been looking at Phil and had been looking at Viola Kersey he would have been a surprised young man. There was a look of startled dismay on her face as she realized what she'd done. And she didn't like it. For one instant the appealing little woman looked for all the world like the household variety of virago who's sweet as all get out as long as guests are present and ready to snatch the family bald-headed as soon as the door is closed.”

“You can always tell duty. It's what you don't want to do--it's what you fight against inside you. Duty's when you realize how it'll hurt other people and you choose between that and what would be easiest for you.”

“Mrs. Kersey had not been questioned at all, as far as I knew. She had the air of someone with a story all made up to tell and no one to tell it to.”

“Do you have to do murder?Do we have to do murder? Sure we have to do murder. There are only two subjects--a woman's chastity, and murder. Nobody's interested in chastity any more. Murder's all we got to write stories about.”

“Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck.”