Raymond Chandler Quotes

Most popular Raymond Chandler Quotes

The more you reason, the less you create. - Raymond Chandler quote.
The more you reason, the less you create.
— Raymond Chandler

creativity

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. - Raymond Chandler quote.
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
— Raymond Chandler
If you believe in an ideal, you don't own you, it owns you. - Raymond Chandler quote.
If you believe in an ideal, you don't own you, it owns you.
— Raymond Chandler
It was a blonde.  A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. - Raymond Chandler quote.
It was a blonde.  A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
— Raymond Chandler Farewell, My Lovely

blondes

It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people. - Raymond Chandler quote.
It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.
— Raymond Chandler The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler

English

She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens. - Raymond Chandler quote.
She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.
— Raymond Chandler The Lady in the Lake
The faster I write the better my output.  If I'm going slow I'm in trouble.  It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them. - Raymond Chandler quote.
The faster I write the better my output.  If I'm going slow I'm in trouble.  It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
— Raymond Chandler Raymond Chandler Speaking

writing

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you just take the girl's clothes off. - Raymond Chandler quote.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you just take the girl's clothes off.
— Raymond Chandler The Long Goodbye

alcohol

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. - Raymond Chandler quote.
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.
— Raymond Chandler Farewell, My Lovely
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.  The first of these is science, and the second is art. - Raymond Chandler quote.
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.  The first of these is science, and the second is art.
— Raymond Chandler The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler

art truth science

Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her. - Raymond Chandler quote.
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
— Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep

thinking

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. - Raymond Chandler quote.
Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better.
— Raymond Chandler The Life of Raymond Chandler

prose

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing.  There is more than one way to conquer a country. - Raymond Chandler quote.
It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing.  There is more than one way to conquer a country.
— Raymond Chandler Raymond Chandler Speaking

advertising

In the long run, however little you talk or even think about it, the most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. - Raymond Chandler quote.
In the long run, however little you talk or even think about it, the most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.
— Raymond Chandler Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler

style

I regard psychiatry as fifty per cent bunk, thirty per cent fraud, ten per cent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read it. - Raymond Chandler quote.
I regard psychiatry as fifty per cent bunk, thirty per cent fraud, ten per cent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read it.
— Raymond Chandler The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959

psychiatrist

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split. - Raymond Chandler quote.
Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.
— Raymond Chandler Atlantic Monthly

grammar

Television's perfect.  You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought.  And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze.  You don't have to concentrate.  You don't have to react.  You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. - Raymond Chandler quote.
Television's perfect.  You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought.  And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze.  You don't have to concentrate.  You don't have to react.  You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it.
— Raymond Chandler

television