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31 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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“When I yanked Tai over backward by his fat throat, and slammed him to the floor, his guns were still barking metal” |
Dashiell Hammett, The House on Turk Street |
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“He didn’t believe me. He never believed me. He went to the gallows thinking me a liar” |
Dashiell Hammett, The House on Turk Street |
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The chinese are a thorough people; if one of them carries a gun at all, he usually carries two or three or more. One gun had been taken from Tai, and if they tried to trust him without frisking him, there was likely to be fireworks. So I moved to one side. |
Dashiell Hammett, The House on Turk Street |
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Well, you can call it a decidedly successful operation…. And that’s what brought me here. |
Dashiell Hammett, The House on Turk Street |
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"Listen," I told him earnestly, "if you want to call all the plays in the game, you can carry the ball yourself. Or you can save yourself a lot of money and hire an order taker. I have to do things my own way." |
Raymond Chandler, “Trouble is my Business” |
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“I need a man.” |
Raymond Chandler, “Trouble is my Business” |
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"Somebody was nuts. I was nuts. Everybody was nuts. Nothing fit together worth a nickel." |
Raymond Chandler, “Trouble is my Business” |
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"Nobody knows where he is. Miss Huntress doesn't know. I don't know. No one at any of the places where he might be knows." "But I'm smarter than they are," I said. "I know." |
Raymond Chandler, “Trouble is my Business” |
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"The arteries stood out in Grave Digger’s swollen neck and his voice came out cotton dry. “We got the highest crime rate on earth among the colored people in Harlem. And there ain’t but three things to do about it: Make the criminals pay for it -you don’t want to do that; pay the people to live decently- you ain’t going to do that; so all that’s left is let’em eat one another up." |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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"He then looked from one detective to the other. “what the hell's going on today? It’s only ten o’clock in the evening and judging from the reports it’s been going on like this since morning.” He leafed through the reports, reading charges: “Man kills his wife with an axe for burning his breakfast pork chop...man shoots another man demonstrating a recent shooting he had witnessed...man stabs another man for spilling beer on his new suit...man kills himself in a bar playing Russian roulette with a .32 revolver...woman stabs man in stomach fourteen times, no reason given...woman scalds neighboring woman with pot of boiling water for speaking to her husband...man arrested for threatening to blow up subway train because he entered the wrong station and couldn’t get his token back-” “All colored citizens,” Coffin Ed interrupted. |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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“You’re certain this bale of cotton was carried by the meat delivery truck used by the jackers?” Anderson said. “We found fibers of raw cotton in the truck. Uncle Bud finds a bale of cotton on 137th Street and sells it to the junkyard. The bale of cotton is missing. A junkyard laborer has been killed. We’re certain of that much” Grave Digger said. “But what could make this bale of cotton that important?” “Identification. Maybe it points directly to the hijackers,” Grave Digger said. |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were realists. They knew they didn’t have second sight. So they had stool pigeons from all walks of life: criminals, straight men and squares, They had their time and places for contacting their pigeons well organized; no pigeon knew another; and only a few of those who were really pigeons were known as pigeons. But without them most crimes would never to be solved. |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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Grave Digger slapped him so hard his body bent one-sided like a rubber man, and Coffin Ed slapped him back. They slapped him back and forth until his brains were addled, but left no bruises. They let him get his breath back and gave him time for his brains to settle. Then Grave Digger said, “Let’s start over |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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Deke looked sick. He knew it was a good story. He knew if she took it to court, dressed in black, her eyes downcast in sorrow, and spoke in a halting manner-with his record- she could make it stick. She didn’t have any criminal record. He could see the chair in Sing Sing and himself sitting in it” |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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It was Grave Digger’’s first night back on duty since he had been shot up by one of Benny Mason’s hired guns in the caper resulting from the loss of a shipment of heroin. He had been in the hospital for three months fighting a running battle with death, and he had spend three months at home convalescing. Other than for the bullet scars hidden beneath his clothes and the finger-size scar obliterating the hairline at the base of his skull where the first bullet had burned off the hair….had always looked like two hog farmers on a weekend in the Big Town” |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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They were silent for a moment with the rain pouring over them, thinking of these eighty-seven families who had put down their thousand-dollar grubstakes on a dream. They knew that these families had little money….These people had deserted the South because it could never be considered their home. Many had been sent north by the white southerners in revenge for the desegregation ruling. Other had fled, thinking the North was better...But that didn’t make a black man any less criminal than a white; and they had to find the criminals who hijacked the money, black or white. |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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At that moment they felt the same as all the other helpless black people standing in the rain. |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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“Well kiss my foot if it isn’t Jones,” Lieutenant Anderson exclaimed, rising from behind the captain’s desk to extend his hand to his ace detectives. Slang sounded as phony as a copper’s smile coming from his lips, but the warm smile lighting his thin pale face and the twinkle in his deep-set blue eyes squared on it. “Welcome home.” |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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“How you reckon he figured it out?" Coffin Ed asked. "Hell, man, how you think he was going to miss seeing the bale had been tampered with," Grave Digger said. "As much cotton as he’s handled in his lifetime.” |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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The white cops looked at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed with the envious awe usually reserved for a lion tamer with a cage of big cats. Coffin Ed joined Grave Digger and they walked to a call box and phoned Lieutenant Bailey. "All over for today," Grave Digger reported. Bailey gave a sigh of relief...Both of them had been suspended at different times for what the commissioner considered unnecessary violence and brutality...But he wasn’t taking any sides” |
Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem |
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“More than simply telling a gripping story….It can weave together the range of forces that shape the lives of the urban poor.” |
Chadda & Wilson, “Why We’re Teaching The Wire at Harvard” |
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"Bande Maximum Security Prison was the brainchild of Askia Amin, our country's first prime minister. He had seen a model for it during a official visit to Latin America. Upon his return he signed an order for a replica to be built in a reclaimed swamp, in a location as remote from the bustle of life as possible.. A few weeks after the completion of the prison Isa Palat Bello led a group of junior officers to stage our country;s first coup. Amin and many of his ministers became the prison's first inmates." |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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"We know an easy way to get the facts out of you," said the woman when the session resumed. "so, it's up to you." My back seethed with pain. My body already felt like a thing less alive than slowly dying and the suggestion of torture reached me only in a distant, abstract way... Let's just give him the mosquito treatment |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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"Why have you become involved in this dangerous scheme? I asked Dr. Mandi as we walked to our cars. He halted and raised his head to scan the sky. Then he sighed and his gaze came down, revealing eyes that had misted over...."Well, here's to the adventure of three underdogs, then. Goodbye." |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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"A prostitute carries two spirits within her. With one she goes out into the night. With the other she lives a normal life. A false name keeps our two spirits apart. If we didn't keep them separate, we might go mad."… .Emilia is the name with which I return all the fake smiles that greet me at night. It's the name with which I throw my thighs apart for a stranger's erection and afterwards take his money...Because Iyese is not a prostitute. Emilia is." |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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“On October 1 1960 our country had groped its way through the dark waters of the British womb and emerged into the world as a nation in its own right. The birth had been a long time coming In 1884 representatives of British trading companies had taken to Berlin a map with which they persuaded their European siblings to acknowledge a large parcel of land on the western hump of Africa as possession of the British crown .. But the English uppishness neither deterred the natives nor prevented the unravelling of the British Empire, an event accelerated by the world's second big war....hour of our failure and disillusionment” |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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“I asked because some of the things I read in our newspapers enrage me. Some of your colleagues talk the foolish language of the white man. I actually read a columnist who argued that we are born thieves, there's nothing we can do about it. And I ask, this thieving, when did it become part of our blood? ...neither to the sky...to earth” |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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p142-143 “Is that what we all fought for? So that a few of us can eat and have swollen bellies while the rest of us go to sleep with hunger ringing in our stomachs?" He looked at me, the skin beneath his eyes sagged with sadness. "Can anything be done?" I asked. He sighed. "Yes. First, we must ask ourselves what is the identity of this place called Madia? Why does our present identity bear no marks of our past? What is the meaning of our history? These questions can only lead us to the truth, namely that we live in a bastard nation.... |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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“Don’t fear any man, but fear lying. Remember this: a story that must be told never forgives silence. Speech is the mouth's debt to a story. You came from good loins. Your mother;s breast was not sour when you drank from it. Let the things your mother and father taught you be your language in the world." |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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“My grandmother was right: stories never forgive silence. My silence has no hope of redemption. It is too late in the day for me to look for grand insights. What I know are simple truths. I know that the fabric of memory is reinforced by stories rent by silence...that a voiceless man is good and dead. |
Ndibe, Arrows of Rain |
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"But the dull details are often the vital ones." |
The Bletchley Circle |
