Quotes from book
Playback

Name: Playback
Author: Raymond Chandler

Playback is a novel by Raymond Chandler featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe. It was first published in Britain in July 1958; the US edition followed in October that year. Chandler died the following year; Playback is his last completed novel.

“If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive.
If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.”

Raymond Chandler book Playback

Source: Playback

“(Henry Clarendon IV:) "Is God happy with the poisoned cat dying alone in convulsions behind the billboard? Is God happy that life is cruel and that only the fittest survive? The fittest for what? Oh no, far from it. If God were omnipotent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn’t have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium. Is it blasphemy to suggest that God has his bad days when nothing goes right, and that God’s days are very, very long?"”

Raymond Chandler book Playback

Source: Playback (1958), chapter 17

“You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.”

Raymond Chandler book Playback

Source: Playback (1958), chapter 14