Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandlerwas a British-American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime. All but Playback have been...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 July 1888
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.
Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
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.
Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve a problem.
James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, 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.
Above all never forget that a marriage is in one way very much like a newspaper. It has to be made fresh every damn day of every damn year.
The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.
A really good detective never gets married.
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.