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
I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling.
A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful.
The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you.
They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.
You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.
The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.
I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.
There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.
You can't tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.