Algernon. Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I? Cecily. Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication.

I love this moment in China Miéville's The City & the City: The narrator (for this is an I-book), Inspector Tyador Borlu, is a noir cop in a fictional Balkan capital, Corwi is his assistant, and in their language aj Tyrko means Turkish-style.

Raymond Chandler is making me depressed this afternoon.  Not because Chandler has a knack for hitting a nerve (“On the way out I had another look at the face in the mirror.  I looked as if I had made up my mind to drive off a cliff”).  I’m depressed because I am currently rereading The Little Sister in The Library of America edition.