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

More quotes by Raymond Chandler

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A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)
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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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
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I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.
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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There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
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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You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.
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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A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled.
Raymond Chandler
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The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
Raymond Chandler
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Raymond Chandler
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There are no vital and significant forms of art there is only art, and precious little of that.
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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It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
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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A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
Raymond Chandler
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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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When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
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