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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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Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Men
Sure
Occasion
Someone
Sober
Stills
Occasions
Still
Alcohol
Alcoholic
Anything
Drinking
Alcoholism
Real
Mets
Drinks
Much
Except
Alcoholics
Never
Drink
Predict

More quotes by 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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Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Raymond Chandler
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There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
Raymond Chandler
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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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Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.
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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Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.
Raymond Chandler
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I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
Raymond Chandler
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.
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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James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.
Raymond Chandler
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Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
Raymond Chandler
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A really good detective never gets married.
Raymond Chandler
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I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
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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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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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