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

“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.”

“The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.”

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

“I like a little danger. Tame danger, controlled by me. It gives me a sense of power, I guess, to take my life in my hands and know damn well I’m not going to lose it.”

“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.”

“All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman’s place is in the home, too?” “Not my home.”