Quotes from Raymond Chandler

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends. I don't mean the ones that hang on forever. There aren't any of those.

Courage is a strange thing: One can never be sure of it

Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you.

Could she *be* anymore out of my league?

Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.

California, the department store state.

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.