Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 5

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• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Ifs

  4 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

• 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 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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• 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

• Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.

  Raymond Chandler

  Mean, Hands, People

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.19, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  8 Copy quote

• I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.

  Raymond Chandler

  Honesty, Crazy, Believe

  1957 Letter to Edgar Carter, 3 Jun.

  7 Copy quote

• You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sleep, Caring, Oil And Water

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.230, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  9 Copy quote

• The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased
  the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Growth, Population

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.5, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  9 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

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• Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where they may—until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can. Until I'm sure you won't do him more harm than you'll do the truth good. Or until I'm hauled before somebody that can make me talk.

  Raymond Chandler

  Fall, Guy, Soul

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.123, Vintage

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• If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

  Raymond Chandler

  Alive, Gentle, Hard

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “Playback: A Novel”, p.200, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  6 Copy quote

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