Quotes from Raymond Chandler

The pursuit of knowledge, brother, is the askin' of many questions.

down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. I went back to my desk, dropped the bottle of whiskey back into the drawer, shut the drawer and sat down again.

She had that fine-drawn intense look that is sometimes neurotic, sometimes sex-hungry, and sometimes just the result of drastic dieting. I

I got down there about nine, under a hard high October moon that lost itself in the top layers of a beach fog.

Sit down and rest your sex appeal.

His blue eyes frosted. 'Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?' 'No. But I'm having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are.

There are one hundred and ninety ways of being a bastard and Carne knew all of them.

She was wearing a brown tailor-made and from a strap over her shoulder hung one of those awkward-looking square bags that make you think of a Sister of Mercy taking first aid to the wounded.

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

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

Maybe you don't like tall girls with honey-colored hair and skin like the first strawberry peach the grocer sneaks out of the box for himself.If you don't, I'm sorry for you. (Pearls Are A Nuisance)

You know what's wrong with this country, baby?...A man can't stay honest if he wants to...he gets chiseled out of his pants if he does. You play the game dirty or you don't eat.

spring rustling in the air, like a paper bag blowing along a concrete sidewalk.

And there are still a number of people around who say that Hammett didn't write detective stories at all-merely hard-boiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini. (The Simple Art of Murder)

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem.

No trial, no sensational headlines, no mud-slinging just to sell newspapers without the slightest regard for truth or fair play or for the feelings of innocent people.

When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.

Tengo una guerra en marcha con la Warner. Tengo una guerra en marcha con el jardinero. Tengo una guerra en marcha con un hombre que vino a arreglar el tocadiscos y arruinó dos discos LP. Tengo varias guerras en marcha con gente de la televisión. A ver quién más… oh, no importa. Usted ya conoce a Chandler. Siempre peleando por algo.

Los editores y otros deberían dejar de preocuparse por la pérdida de clientela que puede causarles la televisión. El tipo que puede soportar un trío de anuncios de desodorantes para mirar a Flashgun Casey y tragarse los elogios a cervezas o a planes usuarios de crédito para poder ver a un par de boxeadores de cuarta frotándose las narices contra las cuerdas no es alguien que vaya a perder tiempo leyendo libros.

Carli's was a small club at the end of a passage between a sporting-goods store and a circulating library. There was a grilled door and a man behind it who had given up trying to look as if it mattered who came in. (Smart-Aleck Kill)

A dark woman with a sharp nose opened her mouth to yell and no sound came from her. There was the instant when nobody makes a sound, when it almost seems as if there will never again be any sound—after the sound of a gun. (Guns at Cyrano's)

down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero

Writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction.