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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
Writing
Thing
Sneer
Make
Durable
Time
Investment
Valuable
Writer
Single
Style

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
Raymond Chandler
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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All reading for pleasure is entertainment.
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The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
Raymond Chandler
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Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid
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A really good detective never gets married.
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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.
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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
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The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.
Raymond Chandler
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I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.
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 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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The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
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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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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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.
Raymond Chandler
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He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
Raymond Chandler
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The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.
Raymond Chandler
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The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
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