Quotes from Raymond Chandler

When it's good it comes easy. Anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of mishmash.

Newspapers are owned and published by rich men. Rich men all belong to the same club. Sure, there's competition – hard, tough competition for circulation, for newsbeats, for exclusive stories.

The only salvation for a writer is to write. If there is anything good in him, it will come out.

Parecía más muerto que muchos cadáveres

him." I said: "Nerts! You seem to forget I know why Lou was killed." Beasley sat up in his chair and moved his right hand

Oh hell and fireflies," I said and went out to the kitchen and gobbled a quick drink, before we started. It didn't do me any good. It just made me want to climb up the wall and gnaw my way across the ceiling.

I'm a romantic, Bernie. I hear voices crying in the night and I go to see what's the matter. You don't make a dime that way. You got sense, you shut your windows and turn up more sound on the TV set. Or you shove down on the gas and get far away from there. Stay out of other people's troubles. All it can get you is the smear. . . . You don't make a dime that way. You wouldn't do it. That's why you're a good cop and I'm a private eye.

This was more like it, a narrowed cluttered little shop stacked with books from floor to ceiling and four or five browsers taking their time- putting thumb marks on the new jackets. Nobody paid any attention to them.

I stopped thinking. Lights moved behind my closed lids. I was lost in space. I was a gilt-edged sap come back from a vain adventure. I was a hundred dollar package of dynamite that went off with a noise like a pawnbroker looking at a dollar watch. I was a pink-headed bug crawling up the side of the City Hall. I was asleep.

In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality.

We had quite a fight.' 'You mean you had – and mostly with yourself.

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody had to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union, or what have you, expects some consideration in return.

In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can't have quality with mass production. You don't want it because it lasts too long.

In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her . . . that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

Wade said hello here and there and people seemed glad to see him. But by that time they would have been glad to see Pittsburgh Phil with his custom-built ice-pick. Life was just one great big vaudeville show.

Un muerto es más pesado que un corazón roto.

the same broken promise of a life of ease. I

and crime is the price we pay for it, and organized crime is the price we pay for organization. We'll have it with us a long time. Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.

You can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face, and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.

The air-conditioned room was full of cold, but Lipshultz was sweating.

I puffed at the cigarette. It was one of those things with filters in them. It tasted like a high fog strained through cotton wool.

No border town is anything but a border town, just as no waterfront is anything but a waterfront. San Diego? One of the most beautiful harbors in the world and nothing in it but navy and a few fishing boats. At night it is a fairyland. The swell is as gentle as an old lady singing hymns.

I walked back down the room and out. The little blonde at the PBX looked at me expectantly, her small red lips parted, waiting for more fun. I didn't have any more. I went on out.