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Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.

Raymond Chandler

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Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Needs
Away
Craft
Writing
Art
Crafts
Ends
Tricks
Littles
Writer
Little
Fiction
Everything
Takes
Nothing
Desire
Need
Write
Learns

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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You can't have everything, even in California
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Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.
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I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
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They write them long because they can't write them short.
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When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.
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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.
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Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.
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But nothing seems to do any good.
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Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.
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California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.
Raymond Chandler
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I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.
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The streets were dark with something more then night.
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There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
Raymond Chandler
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Raymond Chandler
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Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.
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I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
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You're broke, eh? I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.
Raymond Chandler
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I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
Raymond Chandler