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 More Quotes by Raymond Chandler More Quotes From Raymond Chandler I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful. Raymond Chandler barsairfirsts I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. Raymond Chandler wintergrievinglong I'm killing time and it's dying hard. Raymond Chandler time-to-killkillingdying It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. Raymond Chandler darkrainmorning I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. Raymond Chandler apronshousefeelings Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder. Raymond Chandler passiontechniquewriting Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid Raymond Chandler heromenmean Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off. Raymond Chandler girldrinkingbeer The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective. Raymond Chandler realmenfiction However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money. Raymond Chandler moneymaymen Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know. Raymond Chandler like-yourselfwritingadvice Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married. Raymond Chandler ninestruggletwo It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people. Raymond Chandler delicate-thingslanguagepeople 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 hatelongpeople I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling. Raymond Chandler foamtonightcalling If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come. Raymond Chandler hollywoodfunnybook Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar. Raymond Chandler dollarssidesdirty Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish. Raymond Chandler meanhandspeople 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 haterealorder Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel. Raymond Chandler this-generationyearsart
