Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raymond Chandler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1888
Born: July 23
Died: 1959
Died: March 26
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Thornton Chandler
Civilization
Call
Funny
Death
Littles
Little
Coin
Sometimes
Coins
Men
Killed

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

Image
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
Image
Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
Raymond Chandler
Image
The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.
Raymond Chandler
Image
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Raymond Chandler
Image
The streets were dark with something more then night.
Raymond Chandler
Image
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
Raymond Chandler
Image
The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.
Raymond Chandler
Image
The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends. I don't mean the ones that hang on forever. There aren't any of those.
Raymond Chandler
Image
She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.
Raymond Chandler
Image
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
Raymond Chandler
Image
California, the department store state.
Raymond Chandler
Image
I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.
Raymond Chandler
Image
He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
Raymond Chandler
Image
As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.
Raymond Chandler
Image
Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.
Raymond Chandler
Image
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
Image
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