Raymond Chandler citations

Page 2

“In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”

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

“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”

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

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.”

“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.”

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

“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…”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”

“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.”

“I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling.”

“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.”

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

“Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had”