Raymond Chandler Quotes

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

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

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

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

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

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

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

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

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

The more you reason the less you create.

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

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

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

I’m killing time and it’s dying hard.

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.

It is not a fragrant world.

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.

I certainly admire people who do things.

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

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

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.

If you believe in an idea, you don’t own you, it owns you.

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

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

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.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

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

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.

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.

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A really good detective never gets married.

I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.

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

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.

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

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