Raymond Chandler > Quotes

“He's on a bus to Las Vegas. He has a friend there who will give him a job."

She brightened up very suddenly. "Oh- to Las Vegas? How sentimental of him. That's where we were married."

"I guess he forgot," I said, "or he would have gone somewhere else.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlowe...Investigations." It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with same legend which is not locked. Come on in--there's nobody here but me an a big bluebottle fly. But not if you're from Manhattan, Kansas.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister

“If you can get past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of human intelligence, and if you can go out into the night and see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats, but not from the awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do these things and still feel the next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong because this sort of vulgarity, the very vulgarity from which the Oscars are made, is the inevitable price that Hollywood exacts from each of its serfs.”
― Raymond Chandler

“All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page...”
― Raymond Chandler

“Police business,” he said almost gently, “is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get—and we get things like this.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake

“Anybody ever tell you you’re a cute little trick?”
― Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister

“Do I have to be polite?” I asked. “Or can I just be natural?”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Philip Marlowe, 38, a private licence operator of shady reputation, was apprehended by police last night while crawling through the Ballona Storm Drain with a grand piano on his back. Questioned at the University Heights Police Station, Marlowe declared he was taking the piano to the Maharajah of Coot-Berar. Asked why he was wearing spurs, Marlowe declared that a client's confidence was sacred. Marlowe is being held for investigation. Chief Hornside said police were not yet ready to say more. Asked if the piano was in tune, Chief Hornside declared that he had played the Minute Waltz on it in thirty-five seconds and so far as he could tell there were no strings in the piano. He intimated that someting else was. A complete statement to the press will be made within twelve hours, Chief Hornside said abruptly. Speculation is rife that Marlowe was attempting to dispose of a body.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister

“If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I'm not sneering at sex. It's necessary and it doesn't have to be ugly. But it always has to be managed. Making it glamorous is a billion-dollar industry and it costs every cent of it.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I walked to the windows and pulled the shades up and opened the windows wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered automobile exhausts and the streets of the city. I reached for my drink and drank it slowly. The apartment house door closed itself down below me. Steps tinkled on the quiet sidewalk. A car started up not far away. It rushed off into the night with a rough clashing of gears. I went back to the bed and looked down at it. The imprint of her head was still in the pillow, of her small corrupt body still on the sheets. I put my empty glass down and tore the bed to pieces savagely.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Her eyes ate me.”
― Raymond Chandler

“At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.”
― Raymond Chandler

“The next hour was three hours long”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn't hear too well what it said, partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Pero siempre me gustan los libros equivocados. Y las películas equivocadas. Y la gente equivocada.”
― Raymond Chandler, Selected Letters

“Hammett was the ace performer... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.”
― Raymond Chandler

“Then there were no more houses, just the burnt foothills and the cement ribbon and a sheer drop on the left into the coolness of a nameless canyon, and on the right heat bouncing off the seared clay bank at whose edge a few unbeatable wild flowers clawed and hung on like naughty children who won’t go to bed.”
― Raymond Chandler, Mandarin's Jade and Other Stories

“The living room was still dark, because of the heavy growth of the shrubbery the owner had allowed to mask the windows. I put a lamp on and mooched a cigarette. I lit it. I stared down at him. I rumpled my hair which was already rumpled. I put the old tired grin on my face.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I don't greatly care for passes this early in the morning.”
― Raymond Chandler

“From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”
― Raymond Chandler, The High Window

“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.”
― Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe Complete Collection

“Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Sooner or later I may figure out why you like being a kept poodle.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“The stores along Hollywood Boulevard were already beginning to fill up with overpriced Christmas junk, and the daily papers were beginning to scream about how terrible- it would be if you didn't get your Christmas shopping done early.”
― Raymond Chandler

“you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.”
― Raymond Chandler