The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the… — 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
It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“That's the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his… — 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