Raymond Chandler: Man

Raymond Chandler was Novelist, screenwriter. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Raymond Chandler: 248 quotes14 likes

“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 book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

“I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Source: The Simple Art of Murder

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

“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.”

Raymond Chandler

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.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2

“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.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

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

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2

“Okay, thees Hench no good, but poor guy, drunk, no job. Pay no rent, but I got lotsa money. So I say, Look, Hench, you make the confess. You sick man. Two three weeks sick. You go into court. I have a lawyer for you. You say to hell with the confess. I was drunk. The damn coppers are stuck. The judge he turn you loose and you come back to me and I take care of you. Okay? So Hench say okay, make the confess. That's all.'
I said: 'And after two or three weeks the bad brother is a long way from here and the trail is cold and the cops will likely just write the Phillips killing off as unsolved. Is that it?”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

'Si.' He smiled again. A brilliant warm smile, like the kiss of death.
Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 24

“You had to play the big scene,” he said coldly. “Stand on your rights, talk about the law. How ingenuous can a man get, Marlowe? A man like you who is supposed to know his way around. The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye (1954), chapter 8

““Who is this Hemingway person at all?”
“A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.”
“That must take a hell of a long time,” the big man said.”

Raymond Chandler book Farewell, My Lovely

Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 24