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
fun real wife
There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room.
funny agents humour
He (The Agent) just takes ten per cent of your life.
funny men civilization
It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.
fun grief waiting-rooms
You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jail house. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.
funny book hollywood
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.
funny women class
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
against along animosity asked beating cares cell clubs disposal few fight gets gives good guards hates jail life looks loves mad man men minor nobody places problem quietly remain running rushing spoons stuff unless yelling
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism. All this stuff you read about men yelling and screaming, beating against the bars, running spoons along them, guards rushing in with clubs -- all that is for the big house. A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world. Life in jail is in suspension.
city paper
A city with no more personality than a paper cup.
acting build changes dollars dressing eighteen good hollywood idol male mentality million millions muddled permanent rewarding six spending throw vehicle vision writer
Its idea of ''production value'' is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler.
air bothered dirty high lay marble matter oil sleeping top tower water wind
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? 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.
adding ball brakes common common-sense front game gray guy high last man mistake monday money morning ought smashed somebody speaks stands suit tells week won
Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells 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 gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up.
himself man mean streets
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.
advertising american-writer chess elaborate human intelligence outside waste
Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency.
challenges movement half
The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement