A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.

— Raymond Chandler

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

— Raymond Chandler

A good title is the title of a successful book.

— Raymond Chandler

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

— Raymond Chandler

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 can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

— Raymond Chandler

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

— Raymond Chandler

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution once revealed must seem to be inevitable.

— Raymond Chandler

A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.

— Raymond Chandler

A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.

— Raymond Chandler

Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper AMD never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way.

— Raymond Chandler