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When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.

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
Gun
Bring
Men
Flags
Plot

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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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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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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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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Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.
Raymond Chandler
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If you liked a book, don't meet the author
Raymond Chandler
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The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.
Raymond Chandler
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But nothing seems to do any good.
Raymond Chandler
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Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men.
Raymond Chandler
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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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Tall, aren't you? I didn't mean to be.
Raymond Chandler
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Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.
Raymond Chandler
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Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.
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 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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Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
Raymond Chandler
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A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled.
Raymond Chandler
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Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool - perhaps - but a fool just the same.
Raymond Chandler
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The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
Raymond Chandler
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I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
Raymond Chandler