Quote

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Raymond Chandler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Half
Inevitable
Seems
Solutions
Book
Mystery
Idaho
Must
Seem
Violate
Writing
Novel
Published
Least
Revealed
Law
Novels
Reading
Solution

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

Image
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Raymond Chandler
Image
I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.
Raymond Chandler
Image
The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends. I don't mean the ones that hang on forever. There aren't any of those.
Raymond Chandler
Image
He (The Agent) just takes ten per cent of your life.
Raymond Chandler
Image
A really good detective never gets married.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool - perhaps - but a fool just the same.
Raymond Chandler
Image
I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
Raymond Chandler
Image
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Your rat tail is all the fashion now. I prefer a bushy plume, carried straight up. You are Siamese and your ancestors lived in trees. Mine lived in palaces. It has been suggested to me that I am a bit of a snob. How true! I prefer to be.
Raymond Chandler
Image
You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.
Raymond Chandler
Image
As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
Raymond Chandler
Image
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
Raymond Chandler