Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

  Raymond Chandler

  Men, Too Much, Big Sleep

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.55, Modern Library

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Goodbye, Phrases, Littles

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.336, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  21 Copy quote

• Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on the circulation and you know what circulation depends on.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sex, Hate, Mean

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.216, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  8 Copy quote

• She had eyes like strange sins.

  Raymond Chandler

  Eye, Strange, Sin

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The High Window: A Novel”, p.161, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  9 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Fawns, Might, Ifs

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Lady in the Lake: The Little Sister ; The Long Goodbye ; Playback”, Everyman's Library

  9 Copy quote

• California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.

  Raymond Chandler

  California, States, Stores

  1949 The Little Sister, ch.13.

  8 Copy quote

• She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.

  Raymond Chandler

  Taj Mahal, Looks, Way

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

  28 Copy quote

• He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.

  Raymond Chandler

  Swings, Hands, Rooms

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.155, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  11 Copy quote

• A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.

  Raymond Chandler

  Fall, Men, Guy

  1953 The Long Good-Bye, ch.10.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Death, Dying, Littles

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.184, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

• The challenge is to write about real things magically.

  Raymond Chandler

  Real, Writing, Challenges

  5 Copy quote

• I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.

  Raymond Chandler

  Winter, Night, Grieving

  "The Big Sleep". Book by Raymond Chandler, ch. 3, 1939.

  6 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Inspiration, Strange, Strange Things

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.36, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

  Raymond Chandler

  War, Moving, Agency

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.174, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  17 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Passion, Writing, Technique

  13 Copy quote

• That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Writing, Average

  8 Copy quote

• A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

  Raymond Chandler

  Real, Drinking, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.169, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  17 Copy quote

• Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.

  Raymond Chandler

  Crazy, Hollywood, Sober

  "Hollywood Remembered: An Oral History of Its Golden Age". Book by Paul Zollo, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.

  Raymond Chandler

  Two, People, Attention

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.34, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  9 Copy quote

• I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.

  Raymond Chandler

  Blonde, Research, Deals

  "The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959".

  7 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Air, Ashes, Cold

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.557, Modern Library

  10 Copy quote

• You're broke, eh?" I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.

  Raymond Chandler

  Two, Trying, Together

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.90, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  11 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Years, Want

  18 Copy quote

• The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Order

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.92, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

Page 3 of 10

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin