Raymond Chandler Quotes About Art

Quotes about: Art

• 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.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, War, Science

  "Great Thought". "The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler" (1976) by Raymond Chandler, February 19, 1938.

• There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Struggle, Writing

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.82, Univ of California Press

• 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.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Writing, Desire

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “Trouble Is My Business: A Novel”, p.5, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Becoming, Ridiculous

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.229, Grove Press

• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Quality, Redemption

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.23, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Littles, Significant

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.5, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

• Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Integrity, Magic

• 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

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Men, Creative

  Raymond Chandler (1987). “Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler”, Delta

• An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Want, Lovers

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.95, Univ of California Press

• Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

  Raymond Chandler

  Love, Appreciation, Art

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.95, Univ of California Press

• I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Reading, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.17, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

• 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.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Science, Light

  Raymond Chandler (1976). “The notebooks of Raymond Chandler and English summer: a gothic romance”, Ecco

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Doe, Entertainment

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.71, Grove Press

• The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Glasses, Hollywood

• The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased
  the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Growth, Population

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.5, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

• Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Class, Play

  Raymond Chandler (1995). “Later Novels & Other Writings”

• Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Years, This Generation

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.72, Grove Press

• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Strong, Laughter

  "The Simple Art of Murder," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944

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