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There are no vital and significant forms of art there is only art, and precious little of that.

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
Form
Littles
Little
Vital
Precious
Significant
Forms
Art

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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But nothing seems to do any good.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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Could she *be* anymore out of my league?
Raymond Chandler
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It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.
Raymond Chandler
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The more you reason the less you create.
Raymond Chandler
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
Raymond Chandler
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The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.
Raymond Chandler
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All reading for pleasure is entertainment.
Raymond Chandler
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You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.
Raymond Chandler
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In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
Raymond Chandler
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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A really good detective never gets married.
Raymond Chandler
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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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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.
Raymond Chandler
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She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
Raymond Chandler
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She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.
Raymond Chandler
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A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)
Raymond Chandler
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Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you.
Raymond Chandler
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I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.
Raymond Chandler