Quotes About Noir

Noir was a brainchild of the United States. And most of the creators of classic noir - novelists and screenwriters, directors and cameramen - were men. Women were their mysterious, sometimes villainous, always seductive objects of desire.

I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.

Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example presents one slice, one that perhaps addresses social dysfunction or some sort of pathology, while mine present a slice that is more upbeat and affirmative.

But, number one, I think traditional noir doesn't work in contemporary storytelling because we don't live in that world anymore

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

Hey," he replied. "Got a light?" she asked, raising an unlit cigarette to her chapped lips.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

At the very least, noir offers an alternate reality - moments of real passion, a bleak code of honor, and a need for freedom amid corruption. At its best, noir offers a map of subversion.

My kundalini noir ached. I am an undead immortal bloodsucker. I have no heart. No soul. So where did this hurt come from?

It all unfurled like a mink from a femme fatale's shoulders in an old film noir. All those tales of a taloned beauty with expensive tastes, her callow lover, the unwitting husband, a staged accident for a big insurance payout. They never ended well. Suddenly, Dara felt a coldness inside. It was all so tacky, so déclassé, a voice inside said. It was all so cheap. So unbearably sad.

Nuit-Saint-Georges, a French pinot noir from a sub-region of Burgundy's Côte de Nuits. All I can tell you is that it was a profound taste revelation! Ever since that night I have loved

Black as night, sweet as sin.

Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers--people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.