Raymond Chandler Quotes

"From "Raymond Chandler Speaking"
On his wife, after her death-

"For 30 years, 10 months and four days, she was the light of my life, my whole ambition. Anything I did was just the fire for her to warm her hands at. That is all there is to say. She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.

A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

A white night for me is as rare as a fat postman. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Howard Spencer at the Ritz-Beverly I would have killed a bottle and knocked myself out. And the next time I saw a polite character drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, I would depart rapidly in several directions. There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at the politicians but there are a lot of nice people in the world just the same.

Gano muchísima pasta. Tengo que ganar muchísima pasta para untar a los tipos a los que tengo que untar para ganar muchísima pasta y untar así a los tipos que tengo que untar.

[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

"Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?"
"It takes about three years."
"Three years?" He looked shocked. "Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well."

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

I'm killing time and it's dying hard.

A man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets.

Sooner or later I may figure out why you like being a kept poodle.

Alcohol is like love,” he said. “The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.

I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from.Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.

"Or can I call you Phil?" "Sure." "You can can me Vivian." "Thanks, Mrs. Regan." "Oh, go to hell, Marlowe."

"The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment."

(A Qualified Farewell)