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Raymond Chandler

66 quotes

“Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds. All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity. All men must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts. It is part of the process of life among thinking beings.”
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)
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”
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)
“The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with.”
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)
“She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You had to play the big scene,” he said coldly. “Stand on your rights, talk about the law. How ingenuous can a man get, Marlowe? A man like you who is supposed to know his way around. 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.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alcohol is like love," he said. "The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(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 (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you read a story, you accept its implausibilities and extravagances, because they are no more fantastic than the conventions of the medium itself. But when you look at real people, moving against a real background, and hear them speaking real words, your imagination is anaesthetized. You accept what you see and hear, but you do not complement it from the resources of your own imagination. The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About the screenplay for Strangers on a Train" (notes, 1950), first published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962), section "Chandler on the Film World and Television", p. 134
“The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Okay, thees Hench no good, but poor guy, drunk, no job. Pay no rent, but I got lotsa money. So I say, Look, Hench, you make the confess. You sick man. Two three weeks sick. You go into court. I have a lawyer for you. You say to hell with the confess. I was drunk. The damn coppers are stuck. The judge he turn you loose and you come back to me and I take care of you. Okay? So Hench say okay, make the confess. That's all.' I said: 'And after two or three weeks the bad brother is a long way from here and the trail is cold and the cops will likely just write the Phillips killing off as unsolved. Is that it?' 'Si.' He smiled again. A brilliant warm smile, like the kiss of death.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source