Raymond Chandler

“I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her.”

“And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.”

“had my books been any worse I would not have been invited to Hollywood and if they had been any better I would not have come.”

“Common sense is the guy who tells you that you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. 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 a grey suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always someone else's money he's adding up.”

“James Cain – faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naïf, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way. Nothing hard and clean and cold and ventilated. A brothel with a smell of cheap scent in the front parlor and a bucket of slops at the back door. Do I, for God’s sake, sound like that?”

“The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.”

“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.”

“It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.”

“Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober.”

“You're broke, eh?"I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”

“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”

“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.”

“I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.”

“She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”

“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.”

“The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlowe...Investigations." It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with same legend which is not locked. Come on in--there's nobody here but me an a big bluebottle fly. But not if you're from Manhattan, Kansas.”

“When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty [...] I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. (p. 262)”

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”

“All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.”

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

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

“Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.”

“He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket.”

“Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood”

“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—that's wonderful.”

“The streets were dark with something more than night.”

“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 of the tricks and has nothing to say.”

“I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling.”

“Velma you says? No Velma heah, brother. No hooch, no gals, no nothing. Jes' the scram, white boy, jes' the scram.”

“She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.”

“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”

“I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”

“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

“All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page...”

“Los editores y otros deberían dejar de preocuparse por la pérdida de clientela que puede causarles la televisión. El tipo que puede soportar un trío de anuncios de desodorantes para mirar a Flashgun Casey y tragarse los elogios a cervezas o a planes usuarios de crédito para poder ver a un par de boxeadores de cuarta frotándose las narices contra las cuerdas no es alguien que vaya a perder tiempo leyendo libros.”

“Pero siempre me gustan los libros equivocados. Y las películas equivocadas. Y la gente equivocada.”

“Carta a James Sandoe, 14 de octubre de 1949.Ahora estoy leyendo “So little time”, de Marquand. Recuerdo, o creo recordar, que fue bastante maltratada cuando apareció, pero a mí me parece llena de ingenio agudo y vivacidad, y en general mucho más satisfactoria que “Point of no return”, que me resultó aburrida en su impacto total, aunque no aburrida mientras se la lee. También empecé “A sea change”, de Nigel Demis, que parece bien. Pero siempre me gustan los libros equivocados. Y las películas equivocadas. Y la gente equivocada. Y tengo la mala costumbre de empezar un libro y leer sólo lo necesario para asegurarme de que quiero leerlo, y ponerlo a un lado mientras rompo el hielo con otros dos. De ese modo, cuando me siento aburrido y deprimido, cosa que pasa con demasiada frecuencia, sé que tengo algo para leer tarde en la noche, que es cuando más leo, y no ese horrendo sentimiento desolador de no tener a nadie con quien hablar o a quien escuchar.¿Por qué diablos esos idiotas de editores no dejan de poner fotos de escritores en sus sobrecubiertas? Compré un libro perfectamente bueno... estaba dispuesto a que me gustara, había leído sobre él, y entonces le echo una mirada a la foto del tipo y es obviamente un completo imbécil, una basura realmente abrumadora (fotogénicamente hablando) y no puedo leer el maldito libro. El hombre probablemente no tiene nada malo, pero para mí esa foto, esa tan espontánea foto con la corbata chillona desajustada, el tipo sentado en el borde de su escritorio con los pies en la silla (siempre se sienta así, piensa mejor). He pasado por esta comedia de la foto, sé lo que hace con uno.”

“Tengo una guerra en marcha con la Warner. Tengo una guerra en marcha con el jardinero. Tengo una guerra en marcha con un hombre que vino a arreglar el tocadiscos y arruinó dos discos LP. Tengo varias guerras en marcha con gente de la televisión. A ver quién más… oh, no importa. Usted ya conoce a Chandler. Siempre peleando por algo.”

“Платих и се отбих в един бар, за да изсипя чашка коняк върху нюйоркската пържола. Защо ли и викаха нюйоркска? Доколкото си спомням стоманените плоскости се произвеждат в Детройт. Излязох да вдъхна малко нощен въздух, за който никой още не бе намерил начин как да го продава. Но не се съмнявах, че доста народ си блъска главата над този проблем. И рано или късно ще сполучи.”

“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”

“The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.”

“Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a domed brown forehead that might at careless glance seemed a dwelling place for brains.”

“The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.”

“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.”

“Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.”

“We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”

“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.”