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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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Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Simple
Comes
Write
Else
Two
Anything
Writing
Rules
Rest

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country
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I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.
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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.
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The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
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The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
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I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
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Could she *be* anymore out of my league?
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Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
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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?
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However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.
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The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.
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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.
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He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
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Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
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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.
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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.
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It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
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When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.
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