Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 5

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• Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.

  Raymond Chandler

  Said, Dies, Hard

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.22, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  14 Copy quote

• Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.

  Raymond Chandler

  Iron, Waffles, Smooth

  Raymond Chandler (1946). “Spanish blood: a collection of short stories”

  14 Copy quote

• The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Men, Paper

  20 Copy quote

• We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." —

  Raymond Chandler

  Sleep, White, Average

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Lady in the Lake: The Little Sister ; The Long Goodbye ; Playback”, Everyman's Library

  7 Copy quote

• It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.

  Raymond Chandler

  Education, School, College

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.37, Grove Press

  61 Copy quote

• If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Book, Hollywood

  Atlantic Monthly, 12 Dec. 1945

  8 Copy quote

• Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Cutting, Thinking

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.49, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

• You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jail house. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.

  Raymond Chandler

  Fun, Grief, Jail

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.147, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

• As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Library, Littles

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The High Window: A Novel”, p.302, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

• James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.

  Raymond Chandler

  Dirty, Writing, Boys

  8 Copy quote

• Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.

  Raymond Chandler

  Hate, Real, Order

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Little Sister: A Novel”, p.184, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  8 Copy quote

• The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.

  Raymond Chandler

  Too Much, Speak, Detachment

  "A Qualified Farewell". Essay by Raymond Chandler (early 1950's), published in "The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler" edited by Frank MacShane, 1976.

  10 Copy quote

• I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it.

  Raymond Chandler

  Care, Sober, Clean

  The Big Sleep (1939) ch. 1

  7 Copy quote

• A good title is the title of a successful book.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Inspiration, Successful

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.75, Grove Press

  8 Copy quote

• The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Becoming, Ridiculous

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.229, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

• The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.

  Raymond Chandler

  Attitude, Integrity, Gentleman

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.150, Univ of California Press

  16 Copy quote

• It is not a fragrant world.

  Raymond Chandler

  Anger, Society, World

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

  7 Copy quote

• There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.

  Raymond Chandler

  Honesty, Writing, Men

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.93, Univ of California Press

  64 Copy quote

• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Style, Investment

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

  12 Copy quote

• If you don't leave, I'll get somebody who will.

  Raymond Chandler

  Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Strong, Laughter

  "The Simple Art of Murder," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944

  7 Copy quote

• The overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the constant drinking, the incessant squabbling over money, the all-pervasive agent, the strutting of the big shots (and their usually utter incompetence to achieve anything they start out to do), the constant fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing they have never ceased to be, the snide tricks, the whole damn mess is out of this world.

  Raymond Chandler

  Drinking, Boys, Community

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.64, Grove Press

  9 Copy quote

• [As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Silence, Mind

  "A Qualified Farewell". Essay by Raymond Chandler (early 1950's), published in "The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler" edited by Frank MacShane, 1976.

  7 Copy quote

• There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Struggle, Writing

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.82, Univ of California Press

  8 Copy quote

• Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.

  Raymond Chandler

  Struggle, Two, Nine

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.70, Univ of California Press

  6 Copy quote

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