Raymond Chandler quotes

Raymond Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter, recognized as one of the founders of hard-boiled detective fiction. His iconic creation, private detective Philip Marlowe, set new standards for crime literature. He influenced generations of writers with his stylish prose and complex characters. Here are 191 of his quotes:

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

Raymond Chandler

Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency.

Raymond Chandler

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

Raymond Chandler

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

When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.

Raymond Chandler

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

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

Raymond Chandler

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.

Raymond Chandler

The more you reason the less you create.

Raymond Chandler

The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce an artistic job of writing.

Raymond Chandler

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

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.

Raymond Chandler

The streets were dark with something more than night.

Raymond Chandler

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

Raymond Chandler

I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.

Raymond Chandler

I hung up. It was a step in the right direction, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hid under the desk.

Raymond Chandler

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

Raymond Chandler

If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

Raymond Chandler

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

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

Raymond Chandler

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.

Raymond Chandler

Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.

Raymond Chandler