Quotes by Raymond Chandler

Its like this with us baby. Were coppers and everybody hates our guts....nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo.

He didnt know the right people. Thats all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country.

When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didnt have one. I didnt care. I finished the drink and went to bed.

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.

But show business has always been like that - any kind of show business. If these people didnt live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didnt ride them too hard—well, they wouldnt be able to catch those emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid or project them across the footlights.

You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime. (Ill Be Waiting)

He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. Hes going to let it go on a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, hes apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.

The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as hard to get as a haircut.

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

She poured us some more Scotch. It didnt seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.

The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut.I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it.

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again.

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that arent as good as others.

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You cant predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—thats wonderful.

His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detach

A good title is the title of a successful book.

The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently he cant be sure. When he can no longer throw his high hard one he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He just doesnt walk off the mound and weep.