So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer."" Me? How?"" The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read."" Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them." She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at."" That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops."" Oh, nuts.

— Raymond Chandler

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

— 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. Furthermore, you don't have to remember. Furthermore, 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

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.

— Raymond Chandler

The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily, or permanently he can't be sure. When he can no longer throw his high hard one he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He just doesn't walk off the mound and weep.

— Raymond Chandler

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. Furthermore, 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.

— Raymond Chandler

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

— Raymond Chandler

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

— Raymond Chandler

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, fitness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goat young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes.

— Raymond Chandler

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.

— Raymond Chandler