Raymond Chandler on Women
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βI like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.β
βShe sighed. "All men are the same." "So are all womenβafter the first nine."β
βHer hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.β
βIt's so hard for womenβeven nice womenβto realize that their bodies are not irresistible.β
βThe girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats.β
βYou can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.β
βA check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.β
βMaybe you don't like tall girls with honey-colored hair and skin like the first strawberry peach the grocer sneaks out of the box for himself. If you don't, I'm sorry for you.β
βSuddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood.β
βA cigarette girl came down the gangway. She wore an egret plume in her hair, enough clothes to hide behind a toothpick, one of her long beautiful naked legs was silver, and one was gold. She had the utterly disdainful expression of a dame who makes her dates by long distance.β