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.
Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool - perhaps - but a fool just the same.
A city with no more personality than a paper cup.
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.
The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.
The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.