Raymond Chandler Quotes

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

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.

So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer.""Me? How?""The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read.""Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them."She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at.""That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops.""Oh, nuts.

You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at the politicians but there are a lot of nice people in the world just the same.

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

I like games of chance, including women.