I've always found it very... sanitary to be broke.

New York is not as big a city as it pretends to be.

When I start out to make a fool of myself, there's very little can stop me. If I'd known where it would end, I'd never let anything start, if I'd been in my right mind, that is. But once I'd seen her, once I'd seen her, I was not in my right mind for quite some time...me, with plenty of time and nothing to do but get myself in trouble. Some people can smell danger, not me.

That's how I found her, and from that moment on, I did not use my head very much, except to be thinking of her.

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.

Talk of money and murder. I must be insane, or else all these people are lunatics.

I never make up my mind about anything at all until it's over and done with.

[describing Acapulco] There's a fair face to the land, surely, but you can't hide the hunger and guilt. It's a bright, guilty world.

[voiceover] It was early October when we made San Francisco, and dropped anchor across the bay from the city in Sausalito. It had been a most interesting cruise, all very rich and rare and strange. But I had had no stomach for it. To begin with, living on a hook takes away your appetite. You have no taste for any pleasure at all but the one that's burnin' in you. But even without an appetite, I had heard it's quite amazing how much a fool like me can swallow.