Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American crime writer, who had an immense stylistic influence upon the modern private eye story, especially in the style of the writing and the attitudes now characteristic of the genre. His protagonist, Philip more..more..

“ Raymond Chandler: 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. #Death and Dying#Death and Dying

“ Raymond Chandler: They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them. #Hollywood#Hollywood

“ Raymond Chandler: The more you reason the less you create. #Reason #Reason

“ Raymond Chandler: A good title is the title of a successful book. #Books - Reading#Books - Reading

“ Raymond Chandler: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. #Love#Love

“ Raymond Chandler: 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. #Arts and Artists#Arts and Artists

“ Raymond Chandler:California, the department store state. #Books - Reading #Books - Reading

“ Raymond Chandler: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. #Education#Education

“ Raymond Chandler:When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns. #Doubt#Doubt

“ Raymond Chandler: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. #Marriage#Marriage

“ Raymond Chandler: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. #Hollywood#Hollywood

“ Raymond Chandler: The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom. #Hollywood#Hollywood

“ Raymond Chandler: Its idea of production value is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken- strangler. #Hollywood#Hollywood

“ Raymond Chandler: A really good detective never gets married. #Police#Police

“ Raymond Chandler: Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already. #Death and Dying#Death and Dying

“ Raymond Chandler: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. #Writers and Writing#Writers and Writing

“ Raymond Chandler:You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off. #Science and Scientists#Science and Scientists

“ Raymond Chandler: Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents. #Agents#Agents

“ Raymond Chandler: She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. #Smile#Smile

“ Raymond Chandler: 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. #Alcohol and Alcoholism#Alcohol and Alcoholism

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