Raymond Chandler Quotes

After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

You're not human tonight, Marlowe.

The thin man had a tight voice that expected to be lied to. (The King in Yellow)

Authenticity is boring, credibility is important

There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican.

You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

It’s so hard for women — even nice women — to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.

Oh sure, I'm her husband. That's what the record says. I'm the three white steps and the bug green front door and the brass knocker you rap one long and two short and the maid lets you into the hundred-dollar whorehouse.

She’s a nice girl. Not my type.” “You don’t like them nice?” He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand. “I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.” “They take you to the cleaners,” Randall said indifferently.

I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one

There is a very simple statement to be made about all these stories: they do not really come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction. They are too contrived, and too little aware of what goes on in the world. They try to be honest, but honesty is an art. The poor writer is dishonest without knowing it, and the fairly good one can be dishonest because he doesn’t know what to be honest about. He thinks a complicated murder scheme which baffled the lazy reader, who won’t be bothered itemizing the details, will also baffle the police, whose business is with details.

"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."

(Letter, April 19, 1951)

A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.

Ohls showed the motor-cycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night’s hard rain hadn’t even dented.