“as if by behaving modestly and discreetly they could make the fire stay up on the mountain and die there, like an unwanted god.”

“No one looks at the mountains. But they were there, making them all look silly.”

“On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession.”

“The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up dismal gleams between the boards of the pier. And the whole pier rose and fell in stiff and creaking mimicry, dancing its long slow dance of dissolution. I reached the end and saw no one, heard nothing but my footsteps and the creak of the beams, the slap of waves on the pilings. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the dim water. The nearest land ahead of me was Hawaii.”

“I used to think the world was divided into good people and bad people, that you could pin responsibility for evil on certain definite people and punish the guilty. I’m still going through the motions.”

“I like the sun.""Do you really? I didn't think you'd go in for simple things like sun. You're the neon type, aren't you?""If you say so.”

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.”