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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

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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
Men
Mediums
Like
Begins
Speech
Becoming
Point
Common
Develops
Language
Literary
Looks
Medium

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.
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She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.
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An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
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The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
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Tall, aren't you? I didn't mean to be.
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Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.
Raymond Chandler
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I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
Raymond Chandler
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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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If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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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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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Raymond Chandler
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The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
Raymond Chandler
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The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.
Raymond Chandler
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A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else.
Raymond Chandler
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A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.
Raymond Chandler
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California, the department store state.
Raymond Chandler
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From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Raymond Chandler