I used to like this town.... Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but good-hearted and peacefu...l.... Now ... we've got the big money, the sharpshooters, the percentage workers, the fast dollar boys, the hoodlums out of New York and Chicago and Detroit--and Cleveland. We've got the flash restaurants and night clubs they run, and the hotels and apartment houses they own, and the grifters and con men and female bandits that live in them. The luxury trades, the pansy decorators, the Lesbian dress designers, the riff-raff of a big hardboiled city with no more personality than a paper cup.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, yo...u were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print ... substitute d...runken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd- eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Funny ain't it. Here I am worrying about a woman. Men don't worry much about women when they're around. But when it gets way off f...rom home like we are now, and where he knows he's going a lot further away ... I mean that's when a woman gets workin' in your mind. You reckon you're a fool for not noticin' before how, how big a part of things they be. There ain't nothin' like seein' a woman's face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Zeb Calloway: This child's seen a heap of Injuns and most of this country. She's big and wild, colder than hell ... the Tetons sta...ndin' higher than the clouds. By beaver, there's nothin' prettier than the upper Missouri. She's wild and pretty like a virgin woman. But the prettiest part of it all belongs to her people--Blackfeet--proud Injuns. Ain't gonna let no white men spy on their country. Only thing they're feared of is a white man's sickness. Jim Deakins: What's that? Zeb: Grabs. White men don't see nothin' pretty lest they wants to grab it. The more they grab, the more they wanna grab. It's like a fever, and they can't get cured. The only thing for them to do is keep on grabbin' until everything belongs to white men and then start grabbin' from each other. Can't reckon Injuns got no reason to love nothin' white. By beaver, this child'd rather be in that Black Feet country than anywheres else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »