Raymond Chandler Quotes

And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.

"I said: "Dead end - quiet, restful, like your town. I like a town like this." Marlowe (talking about Olympia) in a short story called Goldfish."

The big man leaned down from his hips and bent his knees a little and breathed in my face.
‘What for did you call me Hemingway, pally?’
‘There are ladies present.

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

"I don't like your manner," Kingsley said in a voice you could have crack a Brazil nut on.

"That's all right," I said. "I'm not selling it."

The next hour was three hours long

I looked at Spangler. He was leaning forward so far he was almost out of his chair. He looked as if he was going to jump. I couldn't think of any reason why he should jump, so I thought he must be excited. I looked back at Breeze. He was about as excited as a hole in the wall.

I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee.

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.

She thought. It was nice to watch her thinking. She still had her legs crossed, and still carelessly.

You know who they are?” Tony said softly. “I could maybe give nine guesses. And twelve of them would be right.” (I'll be waiting)

you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.