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

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
Always
Never
Detective
Detectives
Hats
Takes
Tell

More quotes by 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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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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But nothing seems to do any good.
Raymond Chandler
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Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had
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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There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
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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A really good detective never gets married.
Raymond Chandler
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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
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Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.
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
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Mostly I just kill time, he said, and it dies hard.
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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I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
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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Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Raymond Chandler
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Raymond Chandler
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I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
Raymond Chandler
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The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends. I don't mean the ones that hang on forever. There aren't any of those.
Raymond Chandler
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It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.
Raymond Chandler