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… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share
Common sense is the guy who tells you that 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… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share
“Hammett was the ace performer... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key]… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“He [James Cain] is every kind of writer I detest...a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“A three-piece Mexican band was making the kind of music a Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image