Raymond Chandler quotes - page 2

I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room. (Raymond Chandler)
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in. View quote
Raymond Chandler
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. View quote
Raymond Chandler
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split. View quote
Raymond Chandler
The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. View quote
Raymond Chandler
The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective. View quote
Raymond Chandler
You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off. View quote
Raymond Chandler
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. View quote
Raymond Chandler
The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men. View quote
Raymond Chandler
The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment. View quote
Raymond Chandler
[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine. (Raymond Chandler)
A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. View quote
Raymond Chandler
A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins. View quote
Raymond Chandler
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. View quote
Raymond Chandler
Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married. View quote
Raymond Chandler
Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober. View quote
Raymond Chandler
Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be. View quote
Raymond Chandler
I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes. View quote
Raymond Chandler
Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You're the second guy I've met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail. View quote
Raymond Chandler
Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. View quote
Raymond Chandler
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)
I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it. View quote
Raymond Chandler
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. View quote
Raymond Chandler
There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel. View quote
Raymond Chandler
He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in. View quote
Raymond Chandler