Raymond Chandler Quotes

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

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.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.

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.

There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.

I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.

I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.

Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.

The more you reason the less you create.

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.

California, the department store state.

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

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.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid

A good title is the title of a successful book.

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.

She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.

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.

A really good detective never gets married.

Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

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

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

The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.

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

The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt.

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.

Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency

I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read.