The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
If people could deal with each other honestly, they would not need agents. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people.… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix,… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
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… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Common sense is the guy who tells you that you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“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