Raymond Chandler Quotes

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts....nothing we do is right, n...

But show business has always been like that - any kind of show business. If these people didn't live...

Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type...

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infi...

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. S...

I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very g...

To say goodbye is to die a little.

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be."Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinki...

It's goddamned funny in this police racket how an old woman can look out of a window and see a guy r...

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a dol...

The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A len...

I believe...that to be very poor and very beautiful is most probably a moral failure more than an ar...

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

I like games of chance, including women.

It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.

You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and...

She was a cute as a washtub.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as ha...

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge t...

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After t...

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution once revealed must se...

She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam...

I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer...

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need ...

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a write...

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

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

One day, everything will be like before again. And it is not like it.

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

Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no int...

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

The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently he can't be sure. When he can no longe...

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.

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

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.

You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime. (I'll Be Waiting)

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows ...

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The ...

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The ...

A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and ...

He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He's going to let it go on a little whi...

When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it an...

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and l...

I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and ev...

I'm killing time and it's dying hard.

You like it in jail?It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the bea...

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real al...

You like it in jail?""It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

You like it in jail?''It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. I...

It is not a fragrant world.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afra...

A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

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

Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the highe...

His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they l...

One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is every happy anywhere.

Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and a...

You're broke, eh?"I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.

Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of ...

So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer.""Me? How?""The papers and the police fixed...

Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Ma...

He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden countr...

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

Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to f...

I didn't mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It...

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was ...