Quotes from Raymond Chandler

Eddie Mars would have been very unlikely to involve himself in a double murder just because another man had gone to town with the blonde he was not even living with. It might have annoyed him, but business is business, and you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.

Mr. Cobb was my escort, she said. Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten — when Larry Cobb was sober.

Sono un egocentrico farabutto, una prostituta letteraria o un manutengolo delle lettere, scegliete voi la definizione che più vi piace, sono marcio dalla punta dei piedi alla cima dei capelli. E dunque cosa potete fare per me? Che cosa dovrei fare? Perché non andate in bestia? Non ho alcun motivo di andare in bestia. Sto solo ascoltandovi mentre odiate voi stesso. È noioso, ma non ferisce la mia suscettibilità.

Slim quiet Negroes

El alcohol es como el amor —expresó—. El primer beso es magia; el segundo, intimidad; el tercero, rutina. Después de eso lo que hacemos es desvestir a la muchacha.

He blushed a little.

He looked me up and down, brilliant black eyes sweeping slowly and the silky fringe of long eyelashes following them.

Of course I have no right to assume that I shall go to heaven. Sounds rather dull, as a matter of fact.

He leaned his back against the workbench and looked me over without haste, without interest, as if he was looking at a slab of cold meat. Perhaps he thought of people that way.

Only a noon or late sports edition would use a headline like that.

Once outside the law you're all the way outside. You think he's just a gambler. I think he's a pornographer, a blackmailer, a hot car broker, a killer by remote control, and a suborner of crooked cops. He's whatever looks good to him, whatever has the cabbage pinned to it. Don't try to sell me on any high-souled racketeers. They don't come in that pattern.

my whole career is based on the idea that the formula doesn't matter, the thing that counts is what you do with the formula; that is to say, it is a matter of style.

I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance. I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it. If you think there is anybody in the detective business making a living doing that sort of thing, you don't know much about cops.

Hemingway dice en alguna parte que el buen escritor compite únicamente con los muertos.

And most men can stand what they've got to stand, when it steps up and looks them straight in the eye. Like they're doing all over the world right now.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.

I was way past the age when it's fun to swear at people you can't hurt.

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." I didn't say anything.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that... On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.

American girls are terrific. American wives take too damn much territory.

I needed a drink and was in a hurry to get one. I

sight and snapped a switch on his call box. 'Have

reacted to that just the way a stuffed fish reacts to cut bait.

Marlowe," he said, even more earnestly, "I'll try hard, but I don't think I am going to like you." "I'm screaming," I said. "With rage and pain.