Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 3

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• He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

  Raymond Chandler

  Men, Too Much, Big Sleep

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.55, Modern Library

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• Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

  Raymond Chandler

  Love, Appreciation, Art

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.95, Univ of California Press

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• Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.

  Raymond Chandler

  Two, People, Attention

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.34, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.

  Raymond Chandler

  Hangover, Alcohol, Big Sleep

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.113, Vintage

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• The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

  Raymond Chandler

  Law, Justice, Imperfection

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.54, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.

  Raymond Chandler

  Air, Ashes, Cold

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.557, Modern Library

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• He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.

  Raymond Chandler

  Swings, Hands, Rooms

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.155, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.

  Raymond Chandler

  Hate, Cat, Thinking

  62 Copy quote

• California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.

  Raymond Chandler

  California, States, Stores

  1949 The Little Sister, ch.13.

  8 Copy quote

• She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

  Raymond Chandler

  War, Moving, Agency

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.174, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.

  Raymond Chandler

  Perfect, Mind, Television

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• Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on the circulation and you know what circulation depends on.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sex, Hate, Mean

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.216, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• She had eyes like strange sins.

  Raymond Chandler

  Eye, Strange, Sin

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The High Window: A Novel”, p.161, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Quality, Redemption

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.23, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

  Raymond Chandler

  Passion, Writing, Technique

  14 Copy quote

• It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.

  Raymond Chandler

  Long, Gone, Way

  Raymond Chandler (1995). “Stories and Early Novels”

  12 Copy quote

• I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.

  Raymond Chandler

  Blonde, Research, Deals

  "The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959".

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• I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.

  Raymond Chandler

  Stars, Numbness, Space

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.252, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading.

  Raymond Chandler

  Couple, Book, Reading

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.69, Grove Press

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• That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Writing, Average

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• The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

  Raymond Chandler

  Loneliness, Heart, Essence

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.120, Univ of California Press

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• Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

  Raymond Chandler

  Mean, Eye, Thinking

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.5, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

  Raymond Chandler

  Real, Drinking, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.169, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.

  Raymond Chandler

  Time, Writing, People

  "Writing a new Philip Marlowe: a question of dialogue, attitude and style" by John Banville, www.theguardian.com. January 30, 2015.

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• When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Character, Emotional

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.65, Grove Press

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