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The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.
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
Durable
Make
Investment
Time
Valuable
Writer
Single
Style
Writing
Sneer
Thing
More quotes by Raymond Chandler
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.
Raymond Chandler
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
One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
Raymond Chandler
A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled.
Raymond Chandler
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
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
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
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.
Raymond Chandler
Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.
Raymond Chandler
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
All reading for pleasure is entertainment.
Raymond Chandler
There are no vital and significant forms of art there is only art, and precious little of that.
Raymond Chandler
The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.
Raymond Chandler
The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
Raymond Chandler
Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.
Raymond Chandler
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
As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
Raymond Chandler
Two very simple rules: A. You don't have to write. B. You can't do anything else The rest comes of itself.
Raymond Chandler
The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
Raymond Chandler
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
