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There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.

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
People
First
Personality
Prevents
Take
Amount
Egotism
Enough
Simply
Autobiography
Writing
Sort
Memoir
Really
Write
Admit
Reticence
Men
Cannot
Reasonable
Inverted
Think
Might
Seriously
Exploiting
Thinking
Firsts
Honesty
Memoirs

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.
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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A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled.
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I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.
Raymond Chandler
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I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
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They write them long because they can't write them short.
Raymond Chandler
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Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid
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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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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In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
Raymond Chandler
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The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
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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When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.
Raymond Chandler
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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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She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.
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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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