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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

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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
Critical
Evaluation
Criticism
Critic
Subject
Maintaining
Standing
Measured
Subjects
Necessity
Writing
Professional
Good
Critics
Perception

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The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
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If you liked a book, don't meet the author
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You can't have everything, even in California
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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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A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)
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Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.
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Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men.
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Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.
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I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
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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.
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The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.
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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.
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A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else.
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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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California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.
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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.
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It is just possible that the tensions in a novel of murder are the simplest and yet most complete pattern of the tensions on which we live in this generation.
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I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.
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The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.
Raymond Chandler