Quotes About Raymond Chandler

Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck.

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.

As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.

Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see 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.

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

I said: Dead end - quiet, restful, like your town. I like a town like this. Marlowe (talking about Olympia) in a short story called Goldfish.

Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a domed brown forehead that might at careless glance seemed a dwelling place for brains.

Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character.

I don't greatly care for passes this early in the morning.

She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.

A hard-boiled redhead sang a hard-boiled song in a voice that could have been used to split firewood (Guns at Cyrano's)

The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as hard to get as a haircut.

He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He's going to let it go on a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he's apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.

It's a sordid life, but I'm used to it.

So I got out my office bottle and took the drink and let my self-respect ride its own race.

I used to like mine with champagne. The champagne as cold as Valley Forge and about a third of a glass of brandy beneath it.

I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings

And there are still a number of people around who say that Hammett didn't write detective stories at all-merely hard-boiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini. (The Simple Art of Murder)

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.

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

He says you make good coffee and you get up kind of late in the mornings and are apt to run to a very bright line of chatter and that we should believe anything you say, provided we can check it by five independent witnesses.