Raymond Chandler Quotes - Page 9

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• It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.

  Raymond Chandler

  Delicate Things, People, Language

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.35, Grove Press

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• It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

  Raymond Chandler

  New York, Writing, Criticism

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.78, Univ of California Press

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• Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Men, People

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• I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passe before it gets into print.

  Raymond Chandler

  Two, Language, Kind

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.80, Univ of California Press

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• 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

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• The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Long, Forever

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.158, Univ of California Press

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• You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.

  Raymond Chandler

  Detectives, Tvs, Hats

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “Playback: A Novel”, p.107, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Television, Bucks, Our Society

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Phones, Guy, Heavy

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.77, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.

  Raymond Chandler

  Country, Business, Velvet

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.116, Grove Press

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• All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity.

  Raymond Chandler

  Dream, Lying, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Simple Art of Murder”, p.16, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• 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.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Perception, Criticism

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.78, Univ of California Press

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• It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Men, Civilization

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

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Real, Rose, Juice

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.20, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Literature, Artistic

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.51, Univ of California Press

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• Let us never accept the point of view that mysteries are written by hacks. The poorest of us shed our blood over every chapter. The best of us start from scratch with every new book.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Views, Blood

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.62, Univ of California Press

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• A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.

  Raymond Chandler

  Nice, Men, Vices

  Raymond Chandler (2011). “The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely”, p.15, Modern Library

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• It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.

  Raymond Chandler

  Baseball, Communication, Player

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

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• What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy and utterly lost kind of writing, and have made of it something that intellectuals claw each other about?

  Raymond Chandler

  Taken, Writing, Men

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.278, Vintage

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• I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sunday, Boston, Cities

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

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• Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.

  Raymond Chandler

  Vases, Murder, Alleys

  On the moving of murder mysteries from the English country house to more realistic areas. Quoted in Contemporary Authors (1979).

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• 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”

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• They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.

  Raymond Chandler

  Names, Hollywood, Use

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

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Cities, Personality, Paper

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

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Drug, Vegetarian

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.119, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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