Raymond Chandler Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Raymond Chandler quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

I don't greatly care for passes this early in the morning. — Raymond Chandler

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

He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country. — Raymond Chandler

Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else. — Raymond Chandler

I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling. — Raymond Chandler

Writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction. — Raymond Chandler

I bet she snaps a mean garter. — Raymond Chandler

There are days like that. Everybody you meet is a dope. You begin to look at yourself in the glass and wonder. — Raymond Chandler

in a voice with half the steps missing. — Raymond Chandler

That's the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capital. Sometimes I think it's the only difference. — Raymond Chandler

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

She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam. — Raymond Chandler

It had the austere simplicity of fiction rather than the tangled woof of fact. — Raymond Chandler

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. — Raymond Chandler

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. — Raymond Chandler

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has. — Raymond Chandler

Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you. — Raymond Chandler

To hell with the rich, they make me sick. — Raymond Chandler

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

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

The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated. — Raymond Chandler

I'm rich. Who the hell wants to be happy? — Raymond Chandler

Authenticity is boring, credibility is important — Raymond Chandler

And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London. — Connie Willis

Her eyes ate me. — Raymond Chandler

There was a time when actors went in at the back door. Most of them still should. — Raymond Chandler

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

Anybody home, son?" "You ought to know." "How would I know?" "Go - yourself." "That's how people get false teeth." He showed me his in a tight grin. — Raymond Chandler

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. — Raymond Chandler

A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet. — Raymond Chandler

All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and if it does not it dies and is forgotten. — Raymond Chandler

I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee. — Raymond Chandler

I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday. — Raymond Chandler

If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat - just to see what ran out of it."
"Caterpillar blood," I said. — Raymond Chandler

I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors — Raymond Chandler

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. — Raymond Chandler

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

Her voice was a throaty screech, without melody, as false as her eyebrows and as sharp as her nails. (The King in Yellow) — Raymond Chandler

Manhattan is a small town. It has to be. Only half a dozen places in Kansas are anything else. — Raymond Chandler

I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, although I don't ape his style. — William Lashner

They don't have gangsters in Bay City. They're all working in pictures. — Raymond Chandler

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

It is not a fragrant world. — Raymond Chandler

She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house. — Raymond Chandler

I was in the deep water. It was dark and unclear and the taste of the salt was in my mouth. — Raymond Chandler

A occasional whiff of his personality drifted back to me. — Raymond Chandler

A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. — Raymond Chandler

She was thinking. i could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother for her. — Raymond Chandler

However hard I try to be nice I always end up with my nose in the dirt and my thumb feeling for somebody's eye. — Raymond Chandler

California, the department store state. — Raymond Chandler

They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don't have to please anybody. They are safe. They — Raymond Chandler

I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked. — Raymond Chandler

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins. — Raymond Chandler

You can live a long time in Hollywood and never see the part they use in pictures ... — Raymond Chandler

To say goodbye is to die a little. — Raymond Chandler

My God, you big dark handsome brute! I ought to throw a Buick at you. — Raymond Chandler

If you believe in an idea, you don't own you, it owns you. — Raymond Chandler

The thin man had a tight voice that expected to be lied to. (The King in Yellow) — Raymond Chandler

The pursuit of knowledge, brother, is the askin' of many questions. — Raymond Chandler

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

The same broken promise of a life of ease. I — Raymond Chandler

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

I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic. — Raymond Chandler

I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long. — Raymond Chandler

It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out. — Raymond Chandler

I was doing a cheap sneaky job for people I didn't like, but that's what you hire out for, chum. They pay the bills, you dig the dirt. — Raymond Chandler

I got down there about nine, under a hard high October moon that lost itself in the top layers of a beach fog. — Raymond Chandler

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. — Raymond Chandler

Two very simple rules:
A. You don't have to write.
B. You can't do anything else
The rest comes of itself. — Raymond Chandler

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

I'm killing time and it's dying hard. — Raymond Chandler

Her teeth had the nice shiny look that comes from standing all night in a glass of solution. — Raymond Chandler

You have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes. — Raymond Chandler

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon. — Raymond Chandler

She sighed. "All men are the same." "So are all women - after the first nine. — Raymond Chandler

A slice of spumoni wouldn't have melted on her now. — Raymond Chandler

Lois Magic was not listed in the phone book. — Raymond Chandler

She'd make for a jazzy week-end, but she'd be wearing for a steady diet. — Raymond Chandler

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself. — Raymond Chandler

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. — Raymond Chandler

Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard. — Raymond Chandler

A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of. — Raymond Chandler

Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character. — Raymond Chandler

We were very much in love - the wild, mysterious, improbable kind of love that never comes but once. — Raymond Chandler

He had a sort of dry musty smell, like a fairly clean Chinaman. — Raymond Chandler

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

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. — Raymond Chandler

I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. — Raymond Chandler

I don't much live my life as if I was living in a Raymond Chandler novel, which is probably a good thing. — William Gibson

I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split. — Raymond Chandler

I hung up and fed myself a slug of Old Forester to brace my nerves for the interview. — Raymond Chandler

She was staring after me with an expression she probably would have said was thoughtful. — Raymond Chandler

You like it in jail?'
'It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to? — Raymond Chandler

I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars. — Raymond Chandler

He breathed like an old Ford with a leaky head gasket. — Raymond Chandler

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. — Raymond Chandler

I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest. — Raymond Chandler

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

She was a cute as a washtub. — Raymond Chandler

She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts. — Raymond Chandler