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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
Detectives
Hats
Takes
Tell
Always
Never
Detective

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
Raymond Chandler
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Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.
Raymond Chandler
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The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.
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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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.
Raymond Chandler
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The more you reason the less you create.
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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Tall, aren't you? she said. I didn't mean to be. Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
Raymond Chandler
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When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Raymond Chandler
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Could she *be* anymore out of my league?
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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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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I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
Raymond Chandler
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I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
Raymond Chandler
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You can't have everything, even in California
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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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.
Raymond Chandler
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The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
Raymond Chandler
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They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.
Raymond Chandler
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The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.
Raymond Chandler