Quotes from Raymond Chandler

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid....He must be the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world. From The Simple Art of Murder

They went along a balcony that looked down over the dining room and the dance floor. The lisp of hot jazz came up to them from the lithe, swaying bodies of a high-yaller band. With the lisp of jazz came the smell of food and cigarette smoke and perspiration. The balcony was high and the scene down below had a patterned look, like an overhead camera shot. (Nevada Gas)

coffee was overtrained and the sandwich was as full of rich flavor as a piece torn off an old shirt.

Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains.

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. She was wearing street clothes that looked black and white, and a hat to match and she was a little haughty, but not too much. Whatever you needed, wherever you happened to be—she had it.

He had a heart as big as one of Mae West's hips

The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he'd kicked his grandmother.

One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?" Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. "Did he say 'whom'?" "Yeah, but don't hit him," I said. "There is such a word." Degarmo licked his lips. "I knew there was," he said. "I often wondered where they kept it.

I don't like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don't like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don't like them in the first place.

A half smart guy, she said with a tired sniff. That's all I ever draw. Never once a guy that's smart all the way around the course. Never once.

I didn't say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you're not thinking.

If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive." I

The music gushed from the loudspeaker in a swirl of shadowed melody. Since Vienna died, all waltzes are shadowed. (I'll be waiting)

You like it in jail? It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

This was the time to leave, to go far away. So I pushed the door open and stepped quietly in.

He smiled his first smile of the day. He probably allowed himself four. [...] He was doing an awful lot of smiling that day. Using up a whole week's supply.

They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.

You like it in jail? It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room.

What kind of work do you do mostly?" "Anything that's reasonably honest

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.

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them." ? Raymond Chandler

I drove on through the piled masses of granite and down through the meadows of coarse grass where cows grazed. The same gaudy slacks and short shorts and peasant handkerchiefs as yesterday, the same light breeze and golden sun and clear blue sky, the same smell of pine needles, the same cool softness of a mountain summer. But yesterday was a hundred years ago, something crystallized in time, like a fly in amber

Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.