| "The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be." Raymond Chandler Popular Quotes |
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| 'Common sense is the guy that tells you that you ought to have your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end. 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 the grey suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always someone else's money he's adding up. Raymond Chandler Remarks |
| A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. Raymond Chandler Sayings |
| An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence. Raymond Chandler Adages |
| At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. Raymond Chandler |
| Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency. Raymond Chandler Quotes |
| Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say Raymond Chandler Remarks |
| I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked. Raymond Chandler |
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| I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability. Raymond Chandler Popular Quotes |
| In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism. All this stuff you read about men yelling and screaming, beating against the bars, running spoons along them, guards rushing in with clubs -- all that is for the big house. A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world. Life in jail is in suspension. Raymond Chandler Remarks |
| It is not a fragrant world. Raymond Chandler Popular Quotes |
| It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. Raymond Chandler Remarks |
| It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training. Raymond Chandler |
| Its idea of ''production value'' is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler. Raymond Chandler |
| Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Raymond Chandler |
| She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. Raymond Chandler |
| 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 your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set. Raymond Chandler Popular Quotes |
| The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. Raymond Chandler Quotes |
| The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business. Raymond Chandler Quotes |
| The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas. Raymond Chandler |
| The more you reason the less you create Raymond Chandler |
| The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution form the audience but a mouthful of popcorn. Raymond Chandler Adages |
| The overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the constant drinking, the incessant squabbling over money, the all-pervasive agent, the strutting of the big shots (and their usually utter incompetence to achieve anything they start out to do), the constant fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing they have never ceased to be, the snide tricks, the whole damn mess is out of this world. Raymond Chandler |
| There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. Raymond Chandler Quotes |
| What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy and utterly lost kind of writing, and have made of it something that intellectuals claw each other about? Raymond Chandler Adages |
| When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball. Raymond Chandler |
| When I split an infinitive, god damn it, I split it so it stays split. Raymond Chandler |
| When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. Raymond Chandler Remarks |
| [Poker is] as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency. Raymond Chandler |
