- Philip Marlow: I used to think that all I wanted was the good opinion of honorable men and the ungrudging love of beautiful women. Now I know for sure that all I really want is a cigarette.
- Philip E. Marlow: Into each life some rain must fall.
- Dr. Gibbon: Metaphysics?
- Philip E. Marlow: Music.
- Doctor: I know it's an embarrassing question, even between husbands and wives, but what do you believe in?
- Philip E. Marlow: Malthusianism.
- Doctor: Come again?
- Philip E. Marlow: Malthus, but mandatory. Compulsory depopulation by infanticide, suicide, genocide or whatever other means suggest themselves. AIDS, for example, that'll do. Why should queers be so special?
- Doctor: I see.
- Philip E. Marlow: I also believe in cigarettes, cholesterol, alcohol, carbon monoxide, masturbation, the Arts Council, nuclear weapons, the Daily Telegraph, and not properly labeling fatal poisons, but above all else, most of all, I believe in the one thing that can come out of people's mouths: vomit.
- Philip E. Marlow: I've not seriously doubted since that afternoon that any lie will receive almost instant corroboration, and almost instant collaboration, if the maintenance of it results in the public enjoyment of someone else's pain, someone else's humiliation.
- Philip E. Marlow: There are songs to sing, there are feelings to feel, there are thoughts to think. That makes three things, and you can't do three things at the same time. The singing is easy, syrup in my mouth, and the thinking comes with the tune, so that leaves only the feelings. Am I right, or am I right? I can sing the singing. I can think the thinking. But you're not going to catch me feeling the feeling. No, sir.
- Philip Marlow: Forget the cops. If they'd got enough they'd've nabbed you already: they're not broody hens, they don't sit on their eggs. You know what they do?
- Mark Binney: What?
- Philip Marlow: They break the shells straightaway and *fry* what's inside.
- Reginald Dimps: You must lie there all day, thinking of murdering people.
- Philip E. Marlow: Yes. Yes, I do.
- Mark Binney: I'm not paying you to make me feel small, am I?
- Philip Marlow: Oh, you don't have to do that. That's thrown in without charge.
- Philip E. Marlow: You just don't know writers. They'll use anything, anybody. They'll eat their own young.
- Philip E. Marlow: What's the loveliest word in the English language, officer? In the sound it makes in the mouth? In the shape it makes in the page? "E-L-B-O-W"
- Philip E. Marlow: Why is it when you lose your health the entire medical profession takes it as axiomatic you've also lost your mind?
- Philip E. Marlow: Bastards. I'll wipe you out. Don't you know who I am? I'm the... I'm the Singing Detective!
- Mark Binney: Money's not particularly one of my problems and I'll pay you well.
- Philip Marlow: Oh, you don't know how much I want yet. And I'm not as cheap as I look.
- Mark Binney: Mr Marlow, you can't deny I'm paying you good money...
- Philip Marlow: Money, you're paying me money. Why put "good" in front of it? Who knows its virtue? I don't know where it's been. Do you?
- [to Philip Marlowe, about to rub some ointment into his scaly skin]
- Nurse Mills: I'll have to lift your penis now to grease around it.
- Philip E. Marlow: Why?... Why is it when you lose your health the entire medical profession takes it as axiomatic you also lost your mind!
- Ali: Okay, okay bloody dog, me!
- [he gives a cigarette to marlow who drags and coughs]
- Ali: Good?
- Philip E. Marlow: Good? Bloody marvellous!
- Philip Marlow: I had on my best pajamas, the ones with red stripes and blue forget-me-nots. I was all dressed up and talcumed under the armpits; a million dollars was about to call. I was ready for it.
- 1st Mysterious Man: His throat's been cut!
- 2nd Mysterious Man: I thought his voice sounded funny on the phone...
- Philip Marlow: So, psychiatry's not nasty enough for you? You still want to get into literary criticism?
- Philip E. Marlow: [of nurses] Like all morons with a mania for order, they put everything you really want exactly where you can't get at it.
- Doctor: [Doctors and nurses have been clustered round, discussing Marlow's condition while ignoring him] How do you feel about trying one of the new retinoids? Hmm?
- [pauses]
- Doctor: Do you understand the question?
- Philip E. Marlow: Uh - no, I don't think so.
- Doctor: [slowly] I'm asking you if you'd like to try one of the new...
- Philip E. Marlow: I don't understand the question because I seem to have regressed into a helpless, pathetic condition of total dependency, of a kind normally associated with infancy. The last time I experienced anything remotely like this was in my bloody pram, being poked and drooled over by slobbering cretins, who turned out to be escapees from the local loony bin. They thought they were *doctors* and *nurses*!