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I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

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
Needed
Coats
Went
Insurance
Home
Vacation
Country
Hats
Life
Gun
Drink
Room
Rooms
Coat

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
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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.
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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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A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)
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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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The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.
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Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.
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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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When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
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He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
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I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.
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They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.
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As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
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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 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.
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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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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.
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Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had
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A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled.
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Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
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