The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.
- Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 1647
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From the chair, Terry said, "I used to think you might be my friend, Marlowe. My own genie. Sit with me, drink with me, talk with me. Protect me from the cops. Take me home when I couldn’t make it on my own."
"It was nice while it lasted."
"I didn’t mean for it to end," he said.
"You made it end," I said. "You ended it."
"You know I couldn’t tell you I was still alive—"
"That’s not what ended it." I remembered Eileen Wade’s last words. She’d written a nice note, then gone and swallowed forty-six pills of Demerol. Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled, she’d written. The tragedy of life is not that beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean. "You know what ended it."
"What. Tell me."
I stood before him, a bloodstained shirt crumpled in each hand. He looked up at me. I watched his leg swing back and forth. "For a long while there, Terry, I thought you might be my friend too. I learned better."
"I never meant to deceive you, Marlowe. I never wanted to."
"You just did it."
- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
