Quotes from Raymond Chandler

A slice of spumoni wouldn't have melted on her now.

Go on home and knit socks, darling

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.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

The latter think the shortest distance between two points is from a blonde to a bed.

She's a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge's second term, I'll eat my spare tire, rim and all.

She was a cute as a washtub.

The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn't hear too well what it said, partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down

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

The next hour was three hours long

I was doing a cheap sneaky job for people I didn't like, but that's what you hire out for, chum. They pay the bills, you dig the dirt.

The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn't have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore. They're topped by too many smart minds.

She was staring after me with an expression she probably would have said was thoughtful.

The living room was still dark, because of the heavy growth of the shrubbery the owner had allowed to mask the windows. I put a lamp on and mooched a cigarette. I lit it. I stared down at him. I rumpled my hair which was already rumpled. I put the old tired grin on my face.

No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective.

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.

All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

I don't greatly care for passes this early in the morning.

I'm not sneering at sex. It's necessary and it doesn't have to be ugly. But it always has to be managed. Making it glamorous is a billion-dollar industry and it costs every cent of it.

That's the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't be sure. But when he can no longer throw the high hard one, he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He doesn't just walk off the mound and weep.

Police business," he said almost gently, "is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get—and we get things like this.

The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.

The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume.