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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.

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
Ought
Start
Desk
Didn
Desks
Enough
Hung
Good
Locked
Hidden
Door
Doors

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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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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I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
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There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.
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I certainly admire people who do things.
Raymond Chandler
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The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.
Raymond Chandler
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He (The Agent) just takes ten per cent of your life.
Raymond Chandler
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It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country
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Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.
Raymond Chandler
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It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.
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I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
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An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.
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They write them long because they can't write them short.
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The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt.
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You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
Raymond Chandler
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I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.
Raymond Chandler
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I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.
Raymond Chandler
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Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.
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An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
Raymond Chandler
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What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy and utterly lost kind of writing, and have made of it something that intellectuals claw each other about?
Raymond Chandler
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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