Quotes from Raymond Chandler

I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling.

You mean something happened to him?" Her voice faded off into sort of a sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment.

he breathed like an old Ford with a leaky head gasket.

Ich blickte den Revolver an, und der Revolver blickte mich an.

the daily papers were beginning to scream about how terrible it would be if you didn't get your Christmas shopping done early. It would be terrible anyway; it always is. It

The law is where you buy it and what you pay for it.

I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets.

So I got out my office bottle and took the drink and let my self-respect ride its own race.

Rain filled the gutters and splashed knee-high off the sidewalk. Big cops in slickers that shone like gun barrels had a lot of fun carrying giggling girls across the bad places. The rain drummed hard on the roof of the car and the burbank top began to leak. A pool of water formed on the floorboards for me to keep my feet in. It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain.

I got back on the runway and took all of it and some of the hedge and gave the front door the heavy shoulder. This was foolish. About the only part of a California house you can't put your foot through is the front door. All it did was hurt my shoulder and make me mad.

Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money.

You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.

The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it.

I used to like mine with champagne. The champagne as cold as Valley Forge and about a third of a glass of brandy beneath it.

The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it.

Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else's rain.

I'm a very smart guy. I haven't a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals. I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you'll think of me, I'll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up.

I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings

in a voice with half the steps missing.

She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

Another longish pause. His eyelids were getting heavy. "Ever kill a man, Marlowe?" "Yes." "Nasty feeling, isn't it?" "Some people like it." His eyes went shut all the way. Then they opened again, but they looked vague. "How could they?

His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants.