Raymond Chandler quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Raymond Chandler on Wise Famous Quotes.

The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.

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

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

She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.

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

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

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

I bet she snaps a mean garter.

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

Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.

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

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

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.

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

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

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

I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.

If you liked a book, don't meet the author.

Time passed again. I don't know how long. I had no watch. They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway.

The challenge is to write about real things magically.

LA doesn't have the heart of a paper cup.

You know who they are?" Tony said softly. "I could maybe give nine guesses. And twelve of them would be right." (I'll be waiting)

Coffee was overtrained and the sandwich was as full of rich flavor as a piece torn off an old shirt.

The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality; there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.

And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.

Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a domed brown forehead that might at careless glance seemed a dwelling place for brains.

You're not human tonight, Marlowe.

Velma you says? No Velma heah, brother. No hooch, no gals, no nothing. Jes' the scram, white boy, jes' the scram.

You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.

A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else.

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.

The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as hard to get as a haircut.

Ohls showed the motor-cycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night's hard rain hadn't even dented.

He looked earnestly at me, as if that was important to me.

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

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

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

I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot dangling.

I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it.

I didn't have anything really exiting to drink, like nitroglycerin or distilled tiger breath.

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

His blue eyes frosted. 'Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?'
'No. But I'm having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are.

A really good detective never gets married.

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

Sooner or later I may figure out why you like being a kept poodle.

The streets were dark with something more then night.

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

His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in. (Guns at Cyrano's)

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets.

So is he gonna wake up from that nap yet or what?

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A occasional whiff of his personality drifted back to me.

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

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

The same broken promise of a life of ease. I

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

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

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

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

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

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

Lois Magic was not listed in the phone book.

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

If you're not tough it's hard to survive in this world; and if you're not kind then you don't deserve to survive.

Courage is a strange thing: One can never be sure of it

The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume.

I don't like your manner," Kingsley said in a voice you could have crack a Brazil nut on.

"That's all right," I said. "I'm not selling it.

I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.

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

Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.

The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.

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

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.