Quote

You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.

Raymond Chandler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Never
Detective
Detectives
Hats
Takes
Tell
Always

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

Image
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
Raymond Chandler
Image
He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.
Raymond Chandler
Image
It is just possible that the tensions in a novel of murder are the simplest and yet most complete pattern of the tensions on which we live in this generation.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Tall, aren't you? I didn't mean to be.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
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
Image
One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
Raymond Chandler
Image
The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
Raymond Chandler
Image
You're broke, eh? I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
Raymond Chandler