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A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled.
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
Story
Cannot
Stories
Writing
Good
Distilled
Devised
More quotes by Raymond Chandler
The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.
Raymond Chandler
They write them long because they can't write them short.
Raymond Chandler
All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.
Raymond Chandler
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Raymond Chandler
I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
Raymond Chandler
The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
Raymond Chandler
The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement
Raymond Chandler
A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
Raymond Chandler
Mostly I just kill time, he said, and it dies hard.
Raymond Chandler
Tall, aren't you? she said. I didn't mean to be. Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
Raymond Chandler
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
Raymond Chandler
The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.
Raymond Chandler
I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
Raymond Chandler
A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)
Raymond Chandler
You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
Raymond Chandler
As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.
Raymond Chandler
There are no vital and significant forms of art there is only art, and precious little of that.
Raymond Chandler
However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.
Raymond Chandler
James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.
Raymond Chandler
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.
Raymond Chandler
