All reading for pleasure is entertainment. Raymond Chandler More Quotes by Raymond Chandler More Quotes From Raymond Chandler If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive. Raymond Chandler gentle hard alive The more you reason the less you create. Raymond Chandler creativity success ideas The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities. Raymond Chandler guy reading character Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency. Raymond Chandler waste agency chess 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 fog sound trying 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 desire writing art 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 wall nice jobs The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off. Raymond Chandler writing time people Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron. Raymond Chandler waffles smooth iron I certainly admire people who do things. Raymond Chandler admire people Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober. Raymond Chandler sober hollywood crazy There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others. Raymond Chandler whiskey alcohol drinking Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Raymond Chandler dying littles death 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. Raymond Chandler eye mean thinking 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 gun said needs 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 progress writing advice I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read. Raymond Chandler common-sense fifty years 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 imperfection law justice Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead. Raymond Chandler attention two people Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash. Raymond Chandler eye loss writing
