Quotes from Raymond Chandler

Era rubia. Pero qué rubia. Cualquier obispo haría un agujero en una vidriera para verla

mat. A case of false teeth hung on the mustard-colored wall like a fuse box in a screen porch.

The nobility of France urinated against the walls in the marble corridors of Versailles, and when you finally got several sets of underclothes off the lovely marquise the first thing you noticed was that she needed a bath. I ought to write it that way.

He looked as if it would cost a thousand dollars to shake hands with him.

Bubbles rose in it like false hopes.

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. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me

I've found that there are only two kinds [of slang] that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passé before it gets into print.

He came over and held out his hand. I shook it. It was as clammy as a dead fish. Clammy hands and the people who own them make me sick.

She had weedy hair of that vague colour which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn't enough life in it to be ginger, and isn't clean enough to be grey.

She's a grifter, shamus. I'm a grifter. We're all grifters. So we sell each other out for a nickel. Okey.

There was my yellow cowhide, well scraped on both sides from being pushed around in the boots of cars.

You're as cold-blooded a beast as I ever met, Marlowe. Or can I call you Phil?" "Sure." "You can call me Vivian." "Thanks, Mrs. Regan." "Oh, go to hell, Marlowe." She went on out and didn't look back.

She didn't look hard, but she looked as if she had heard all the answers and remembered the ones she thought she might be able to use sometime.

She didn't even look towards me as I went out. I went out into the crisp fall sunlight and got into my car. I was a nice boy, trying to get along. Yes, I was a swell guy. I liked knowing myself. I was the kind of guy who chiseled a sodden old wreck out of her life secrets to win a ten-dollar bet.

That's the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capital. Sometimes I think it's the only difference.

There was a woman. She was rich. She thought she wanted to marry me. It wouldn't have worked. I'll probably never see her again. But I remember." "Let's go," she said quietly. "And let's leave the memory in charge. I only wish I had one worth remembering." On the way down to the Cadillac I didn't touch her either. She drove beautifully. When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect.

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.

He had a sort of dry musty smell, like a fairly clean Chinaman.

Guns never settle anything," I said. "They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act.

They don't have gangsters in Bay City. They're all working in pictures.

great silent estates, with twelve foot walls and wrought-iron gates and ornamental hedges; and inside, if you could get inside, a special brand of sunshine, very quiet, put up in noise-proof containers just for the upper classes.

Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They always sing the same song, and it always has nice open vowels and a drawn out sugary lilt, and the guy who sings it always strums on a guitar and has a lot to say about amor, mi corazón, a lady who is "linda" but very hard to convince, and he always has too long and too oily hair

On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.

Redheads, don't jump, Tony. They hang on-and wither. (I'll Be Waiting)