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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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Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Name
Names
Use
Made
Kind
Spoil
Time
Developed
Hollywood
Talent

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.
Raymond Chandler
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He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
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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It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.
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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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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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'm killing time and it's dying hard.
Raymond Chandler
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.
Raymond Chandler
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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.
Raymond Chandler
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Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.
Raymond Chandler
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It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
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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The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
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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When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Raymond Chandler
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As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.
Raymond Chandler
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I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.
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