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
Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too much to heart. He… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.” — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong. — 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
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
I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty. — 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
Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
“The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Two very simple rules: A. You don't have to write. B. You can't do anything else The rest comes of itself. — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before… — 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
“The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law."… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
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… — Raymond Chandler Copy Share Image
Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms… — 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
