Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.

  Raymond Chandler

  Eye, Writing, Loss

  Raymond Chandler (1987). “Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler”, Delta

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• I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Reading, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.17, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Integrity, Magic

  12 Copy quote

• The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Years, Want

  18 Copy quote

• The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Challenges, Movement

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.119, Univ of California Press

  60 Copy quote

• An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

  Raymond Chandler

  Age, Literature, Kind

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.75, Univ of California Press

  12 Copy quote

• Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.

  Raymond Chandler

  Crazy, Hollywood, Sober

  "Hollywood Remembered: An Oral History of Its Golden Age". Book by Paul Zollo, 2002.

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• I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

  Raymond Chandler

  Drinking, Beer, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.87, Vintage

  24 Copy quote

• And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.

  Raymond Chandler

  Beer, Broken, Wire

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.93, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

• You're broke, eh?" I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.

  Raymond Chandler

  Two, Trying, Together

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.90, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.

  Raymond Chandler

  Winter, Night, Grieving

  "The Big Sleep". Book by Raymond Chandler, ch. 3, 1939.

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• I certainly admire people who do things.

  Raymond Chandler

  People, Admire

  Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde (1950). “Strangers on a Train: Part I, Final : [screenplay”

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• She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sound, Heard, Edges

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.32, Univ of California Press

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• The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

  Raymond Chandler

  Men, Ideas, Technique

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.73, Univ of California Press

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• I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

  Raymond Chandler

  Winter, Grieving, Long

  The Big Sleep ch. 3 (1939)

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• It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

  Raymond Chandler

  Morning, Rain, Dark

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.8, Modern Library

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• The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Men, Creative

  Raymond Chandler (1987). “Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler”, Delta

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• Two very simple rules:
  A. You don't have to write.
  B. You can't do anything else
  The rest comes of itself.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Simple, Two

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.104, Grove Press

  7 Copy quote

• The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Personality, Perception

  Raymond Chandler (1987). “Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler”, Delta

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.

  Raymond Chandler

  Brother, Couple, Divorce

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.87, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.

  Raymond Chandler

  Fall, Men, Guy

  1953 The Long Good-Bye, ch.10.

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