Quote

Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.

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
Looking
Primordial
Turns
Drain
Perfect
Drains
Lives
Lean
Thought
Bubbles
Back
Watching
Mind
Television
Ooze
Really
Turn
Knobs

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement
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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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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.
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She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
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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.
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All reading for pleasure is entertainment.
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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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Your rat tail is all the fashion now. I prefer a bushy plume, carried straight up. You are Siamese and your ancestors lived in trees. Mine lived in palaces. It has been suggested to me that I am a bit of a snob. How true! I prefer to be.
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When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.
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A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)
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I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.
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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.
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There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
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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.
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A really good detective never gets married.
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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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Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid
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As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
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The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.
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I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
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