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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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Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Find
Always

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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The streets were dark with something more then night.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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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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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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Could she *be* anymore out of my league?
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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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
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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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All reading for pleasure is entertainment.
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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He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
Raymond Chandler
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One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
Raymond Chandler
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A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
Raymond Chandler
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Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
Raymond Chandler
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She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.
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
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When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.
Raymond Chandler
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However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.
Raymond Chandler
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The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
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