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Raymond Chandler
66 quotes
“There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Great Thought" (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Red Wind" (short story, 1938), published in Trouble Is My Business (1939)
“To the memory of Mr. Stan Phillips. (...) Just another four-flusher.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Red Wind" (short story, 1938), published in Trouble Is My Business (1939)
“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.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pearls Are a Nuisance" (short story, 1939)
“The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel" (essay, 1949), first published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel" (essay, 1949), first published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“I remember several years ago when Howard Hawks was making The Big Sleep, the movie, he and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or committed suicide. They sent me a wire... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either. Of course I got hooted at.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 21 March 1949, letter to Jamie Hamilton. In "The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909–1959",
“There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: letter, 22 April 1949, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“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 (1888–1959) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: letter, 19 April 1951, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story", published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler(1976)
“[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
“The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
“By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Hollywood Remembered : An Oral History of Its Golden Age (2002) by Paul Zollo
“The girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'I'll Be Waiting' (short story), published in the Saturday Evening Post, October 14, 1939
“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners." "I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The registration read: Carmen Sternwood, 3765 Alta Brea Crescent, West Hollywood. I went back to my car again and sat and sat. The top dripped on my knees and my stomach burned from the whiskey. No more cars came up the hill. No lights went on in the house before which I was parked. It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're broke, eh?”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tsk, tsk," I said, not moving at all. "Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You're the second guy I've met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from.Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline. It was scarred, flattened, thickened, checkered, and welted. It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...crazy as two waltzing mice.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say money don't stink," he said. "I sometimes wonder.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had a lot of face and chin. She had pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak, and large moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I left, Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie-crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty until her mother came into the space with a broad homely smile on her face to watch me drive away. 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.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The little blonde at the PBX cocked a shell-like ear and smiled a small fluffy smile. She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.'”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'He used to wear a little blond moustache but Mother made him cut it off. She said -' 'Don't tell me. The minister needed it to stuff a cushion.'”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it [the detective story] is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)