Raymond Chandler: Trending quotes

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Raymond Chandler: 248 quotes14 likes

“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 of the tricks and has nothing to say.”

Raymond Chandler

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

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.”

Raymond Chandler book The Lady in the Lake

Source: The Lady in the Lake

“The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.”

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.”

Raymond Chandler book Pearls are a Nuisance

"Pearls Are a Nuisance" (short story, 1939)
Source: Pearls are a Nuisance

“A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.”

Raymond Chandler book Pearls are a Nuisance

Source: Pearls are a Nuisance

“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get…”

Raymond Chandler book The Lady in the Lake

Source: The Lady in the Lake

“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 book The Little Sister

Source: The Little Sister (1949), chapter 1

“Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.”

Raymond Chandler

“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

Raymond Chandler book The Little Sister

Source: The Little Sister

“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 25

“There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.”

Raymond Chandler

“The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 36
Context: When I left, Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie-crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty until her mother came into the space with a broad homely smile on her face to watch me drive away.
I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.