Quotes of the day- Raymond Chandler:
Raymond Thornton
Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and
screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, he decided to become a
detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company
executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers
Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular
pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in
1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven
full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his
death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have
been realized into motion pictures, some several times. In the year
before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of
America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. (Click
for complete article.)
A really good detective never gets married.
Above all never forget that a marriage is in one way very much like a newspaper. It has to be made fresh every damn day of every damn year.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
Crime isn't a disease, it's a symptom. Cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumor.
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in.
He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
Hollywood is the kind of town where they stick a knife in your back and then arrest you for carrying a concealed weapon.
Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.
I hung up. It was a step in the right direction, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hid under the desk.
I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
I never saw any of them again- except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.
I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.
If you liked a book, don't meet the author.
If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up.
She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.
She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze.
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.
The little blonde at the PBX cocked a shell-like ear and smiled a small fluffy smile. She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.
The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.
The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart
We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts
I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out- of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings.
At three A.M. I was walking the floor listening to Khachaturyan working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it.
The voice got as cool as a cafeteria dinner.
If you don't leave, I'll get somebody who will.
I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.
There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.
The streets were dark with something more then night.
The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get.
Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
Categories: Quotes of the day, Raymond Chandler
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