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Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.

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
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More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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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
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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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The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.
Raymond Chandler
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Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
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 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
Raymond Chandler
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Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid
Raymond Chandler
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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
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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
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California, the department store state.
Raymond Chandler
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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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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.
Raymond Chandler
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I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.
Raymond Chandler
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I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.
Raymond Chandler
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One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
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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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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I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
Raymond Chandler
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You're broke, eh? I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.
Raymond Chandler
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But nothing seems to do any good.
Raymond Chandler