Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 9

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• I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.

  Raymond Chandler

  Moving, Knights, Games

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.182, Modern Library

  6 Copy quote

• It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.

  Raymond Chandler

  Delicate Things, People, Language

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.35, Grove Press

  5 Copy quote

• Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.

  Raymond Chandler

  Dirty, Dollars, Sides

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.352, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  27 Copy quote

• However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.

  Raymond Chandler

  Money, Men, May

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.139, Univ of California Press

  6 Copy quote

• It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

  Raymond Chandler

  New York, Writing, Criticism

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.78, Univ of California Press

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• Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Men, People

  7 Copy quote

• An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Want, Lovers

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

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• The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Long, Forever

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.158, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

• You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.

  Raymond Chandler

  Detectives, Tvs, Hats

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “Playback: A Novel”, p.107, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  19 Copy quote

• He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.

  Raymond Chandler

  Phones, Guy, Heavy

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.77, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  4 Copy quote

• Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck.

  Raymond Chandler

  Television, Bucks, Our Society

  7 Copy quote

• Let us never accept the point of view that mysteries are written by hacks. The poorest of us shed our blood over every chapter. The best of us start from scratch with every new book.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Views, Blood

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.62, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.

  Raymond Chandler

  Country, Business, Velvet

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.116, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

• Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Perception, Criticism

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.78, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

• It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.

  Raymond Chandler

  Baseball, Communication, Player

  Raymond Chandler (1995). “Later Novels & Other Writings”

  4 Copy quote

• A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)

  Raymond Chandler

  Cities, Personality, Paper

  5 Copy quote

• A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.

  Raymond Chandler

  Nice, Men, Vices

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.15, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

• What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy and utterly lost kind of writing, and have made of it something that intellectuals claw each other about?

  Raymond Chandler

  Taken, Writing, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.278, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Men, Civilization

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

  4 Copy quote

• You can't tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Drug, Vegetarian

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.119, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  4 Copy quote

• They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.

  Raymond Chandler

  Names, Hollywood, Use

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

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• Common sense is the guy who tells you that you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a grey suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always someone else's money he's adding up.

  Raymond Chandler

  Monday, Morning, Mistake

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• I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sunday, Boston, Cities

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

  12 Copy quote

• He (The Agent) just takes ten per cent of your life.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Agents, Humour

  7 Copy quote

• When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Literature, Artistic

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.51, Univ of California Press

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