Raymond Chandler

“Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.”

“I'm killing time and it's dying hard.”

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

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

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

“You like it in jail?""It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?”

“The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.”

“In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

“Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean.”

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

“She was a cute as a washtub.”

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

“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.”

“One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is every happy anywhere.”

“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...”

“I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.”

“A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.”

“To say goodbye is to die a little.”

“It's goddamned funny in this police racket how an old woman can look out of a window and see a guy running and pick him out of a line-up six months later, but we can show hotel help a clear photo and they just can't be sure.''That's one of the qualifications for good hotel help,' I said.”

“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.”