Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." —

  Raymond Chandler

  Sleep, White, Average

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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Challenges, Movement

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.119, Univ of California Press

  60 Copy quote

• Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

  Raymond Chandler

  Mean, Eye, Thinking

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.5, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  9 Copy quote

• The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

  Raymond Chandler

  Loneliness, Heart, Essence

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.120, Univ of California Press

  40 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Iron, Waffles, Smooth

  Raymond Chandler (1946). “Spanish blood: a collection of short stories”

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Beer, Broken, Wire

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.93, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

  Raymond Chandler

  Morning, Rain, Dark

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.8, Modern Library

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Advice, Progress

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.93, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Funny, Book, Hollywood

  Atlantic Monthly, 12 Dec. 1945

  8 Copy quote

• When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Character, Emotional

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.65, Grove Press

  13 Copy quote

• The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading.

  Raymond Chandler

  Couple, Book, Reading

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.69, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Age, Literature, Kind

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.75, Univ of California Press

  12 Copy quote

• I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

  Raymond Chandler

  Drinking, Beer, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.87, Vintage

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.

  Raymond Chandler

  Education, School, College

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.37, Grove Press

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• As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Library, Littles

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The High Window: A Novel”, p.302, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

• Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.

  Raymond Chandler

  Eye, Writing, Loss

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

  9 Copy quote

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Sound, Heard, Edges

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.32, Univ of California Press

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• Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.

  Raymond Chandler

  Hate, Real, Order

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Little Sister: A Novel”, p.184, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.

  Raymond Chandler

  Dirty, Writing, Boys

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• 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.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Cutting, Thinking

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.49, Univ of California Press

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• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.

  Raymond Chandler

  Time, Writing, People

  "Writing a new Philip Marlowe: a question of dialogue, attitude and style" by John Banville, www.theguardian.com. January 30, 2015.

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• I certainly admire people who do things.

  Raymond Chandler

  People, Admire

  Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde (1950). “Strangers on a Train: Part I, Final : [screenplay”

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Said, Dies, Hard

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.22, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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