Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime . All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is considered to be a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
At least three of Chandler's novels have been regarded as masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely , The Little Sister , and The Long Goodbye . The Long Goodbye was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler's reputation has grown in recent years.
Wikipedia
“Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28
Context: I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.
“Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.”
Source: Trouble Is My Business
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28, Phillip Marlowe watching Mona "Silver-Wig" Mars
“Shake your business up and pour it. I don't have all day.”
Source: The Big Sleep
“I'm killing time and it's dying hard.”
Variant: Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.
Source: The Long Goodbye
“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.”
In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
Context: By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.
“The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.”
Source: Farewell, My Lovely
Source: The Lady in the Lake (1943), chapter 1
Context: The little blonde at the PBX cocked a shell-like ear and smiled a small fluffy smile. She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.
essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
Source: Playback (1958), chapter 17
“We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.”
Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 20
“They say money don't stink," he said. "I sometimes wonder.”
Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 34
"Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel" (essay, 1949), first published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
letter, 19 April 1951, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2
“To the memory of Mr. Stan Phillips. (…) Just another four-flusher.”
"Red Wind" (short story, 1938), published in Trouble Is My Business (1939)
“You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.”
Source: Playback (1958), chapter 14
Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 1
“He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in.”
Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 3
Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
“You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2
essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
"Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story", published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler(1976)
“Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.”
As quoted in Hollywood Remembered : An Oral History of Its Golden Age (2002) by Paul Zollo
"A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
letter, 22 April 1949, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2
“The girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats.”
"'I'll Be Waiting' (short story), published in the Saturday Evening Post, October 14, 1939
'Si.' He smiled again. A brilliant warm smile, like the kiss of death.
Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 24
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 2
Source: The Long Goodbye (1954), chapter 8
Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 17
