Quotes By Raymond Chandler

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.

Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck.

The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.

I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

It is not a fragrant world.

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

I certainly admire people who do things.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes.

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.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

A really good detective never gets married.

Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency.

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.