Raymond Chandler quote: "The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion."

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right butto...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It is not a fragrant world.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated pe...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I c...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, no...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His functi...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more de...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes litera...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scho...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

A really good detective never gets married.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral gro...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were d...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and a...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can m...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobod...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

So by all means let's have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delive...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the highe...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been an...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Its idea of production value is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artis...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have devel...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangli...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.....
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are peop...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. Th...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called signi...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Your rat tail is all the fashion now. I prefer a bushy plume, carried straight up. You are Siamese a...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After t...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent a...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must se...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

A good title is the title of a successful book.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you ought to have had your br...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

'Common sense is the guy that tells you that you ought to have your brakes relined last week before ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The more you reason the less you create.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the l...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After t...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the re...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

California, the department store state.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any sta...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no int...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself ge...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The more you reason the less you create
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The streets were dark with something more than night.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

A city with no more personality than a paper cup.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that wor...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Its idea of ''production value'' is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good wri...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest ty...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

To say goodbye is to die a little.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made u...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for pub...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Just keep your nose clean and everything will be jake.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and l...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would h...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

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

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real al...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar be...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a the...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a dol...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and st...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. I...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

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

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their ac...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

His blue eyes frosted. 'Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?'

'No. But I'm havin...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and w...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down th...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very g...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

To hell with the rich, they make me sick.
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as ha...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Tall, aren't you?" she said.
"I didn't mean to be."
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. Sh...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

Guns never settle anything, I said. They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act
RAYMOND CHANDLER

If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat - just to see what ran out of it."

"Caterpillar blo...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The ...
RAYMOND CHANDLER

I do a lot of video games - I have a YouTube channel where I record me playing video games with my f...
CHANDLER RIGGS

I just went and saw 'Crazy, Stupid, Love.' Julianne Moore - I've been in love with her s...
KYLE CHANDLER

Do it badly; do it slowly; do it fearfully; do it any way you have to, but do it.
STEVE CHANDLER

Maybe the future is like rowing for shore. Your only choice is to try or give up.
KRISTEN CHANDLER

Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate...
CHANDLER BURR

Scouts have always been surprised by the way I'm able to move at my size. How fast and agile I a...
TYSON CHANDLER

I'm a teen boy, so I like seeing blood and guts. I know it's fake, but I'm having fun.
CHANDLER RIGGS

High school was interesting, because I went from a public school middle school to an academy where t...
KYLE CHANDLER

I really love to ride my motorcycle. When I want to just get away and be by myself and clear my head...
KYLE CHANDLER

I love the institution of marriage, and I love my marriage.
KYLE CHANDLER

When you walk out of your house in the morning, you don't know what you're going to see.
KYLE CHANDLER

Megan, I love you,. I will always love you."
I swallowed hard.
"Scared?" He asked.
"Y...
ELIZABETH CHANDLER

Despite what I said about staying the way we were, I changed. I, who have always believed in speakin...
ELIZABETH CHANDLER

That would be something,
BEN CHANDLER

I know some of the guys I play against, they say some things, ... I've just got to approach it like ...
BEN CHANDLER

As attorney general, I've had some connection with just about every important public issue in the la...
BEN CHANDLER

I can either side with what I think is right as far as corruption is concerned, or I can wipe it und...
BEN CHANDLER

When I finished my term, I thought about running for governor then but decided not to because, frank...
BEN CHANDLER

As attorney general, I can either look into it or I can ignore it because they're a bunch of powerfu...
BEN CHANDLER

When Kentucky's veterans answered the call to duty, they showed our nation the ultimate respect. In ...
BEN CHANDLER

They're real guys, guys you can just go up to and talk to, ... They're not holier than thou. They're...
BEN CHANDLER

We have the type of team that can just jump on a team early and we can just hit 'em, ... We can't gi...
BEN CHANDLER

I think it can be a distraction to the player being recruited and the team, if it's something the te...
BEN CHANDLER

There is some indication that the Mississippi senators are interested in doing what's right.
BILL CHANDLER

We want the project to be doable.
BILL CHANDLER

Generally speaking, the Latino population mushroomed here following NAFTA and the fact that some of ...
BILL CHANDLER

We want the project to be doable,
BILL CHANDLER

There are many new jobs, ... but they pay poorly.
BILL CHANDLER

The Sussex County I grew up in is as foreign as Mongolia, ... the poorest people often lived in the ...
BILL CHANDLER

There's a lot fond memories here, ... I met my husband here. A lot of big name drivers like The Duke...
BILL CHANDLER

I credit chess with helping to pull me out of depression and affording me a true circle of friends w...
BILL CHANDLER

Immigrants care about what happens to them in the United States. They want to be our neighbors and c...
BILL CHANDLER

They get booked and charged and are convicted of crimes, in many cases, they are not guilty of.
BILL CHANDLER

What, am I supposed to run around in a little red cape and save the world?
KYLE CHANDLER

This should have been started here a long time ago. It promotes girls being involved at school and b...
ASHLEY CHANDLER

I didn't know what to expect. It was a lot of fun. All the girls were really nice.
ASHLEY CHANDLER

It won't happen this year but we are headed in that direction. Within the next year or two it's feas...
ASHLEY CHANDLER

It's amazing how far the team has come.
ASHLEY CHANDLER

Our freshmen already show a lot of potential. They're going to help us do well this season and they'...
ASHLEY CHANDLER

Austin is such a free and creative place, but I can't enjoy it as much because everyone I love i...
KYLE CHANDLER

In a zombie apocalypse, I expect insane things to happen.
CHANDLER RIGGS

Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.
KYLE CHANDLER

I think the world is crumbling when I have a bad game.
TYSON CHANDLER

I grew up in Chicago, so I've always been a Bears fan. Dad used to take me to Bears games and Cu...
KYLE CHANDLER

We're not much of a camping family. When I was in Cub Scouts, we went camping once, and my dad s...
CHANDLER RIGGS

When you love someone, its never over. You move on, because you have to but you take them with you i...
ELIZABETH CHANDLER

I would laugh at all my provincial inmates, but I’m too busy lusting. I’m not usually interested...
KRISTEN CHANDLER

We ended up moving out to Texas. We live outside of Austin. We've got a couple horses, we've...
KYLE CHANDLER

When you fear nothing, you have nothing to fear
S.F. CHANDLER

I've really gotten into fashion, and ever since I got into the NBA, I feel like players are walk...
CHANDLER PARSONS

Learn fast, fail fast, correct fast, and connect fast
LINDA CHANDLER

Flirting all starts with eye contact! You can tell a girl is into you if she's across the room a...
CHANDLER PARSONS

He said that was the prettiest sight he'd seen in his life. So they decided to stay in Baker Valley.
CHARLES CHANDLER

If you're not really having a good time, it's not worth it.
KYLE CHANDLER

I wouldn't consider myself Goth, but I love Gothic pieces.
TYSON CHANDLER

Me and my dad talked and he wanted me to go out for a sport. I was too short (5-foot-6) for basketba...
CHANDLER JONES

The rents in Tahoe pale in comparison to what the real estate prices have done.
CHRIS CHANDLER

I like to break down vistas and allow them to be stitched back together in the mind's eye. The pond ...
JACK CHANDLER

One way I differ from my character, Coach Taylor, is that I never would have taken this faraway job ...
KYLE CHANDLER

I was never upset that I did not get an Emmy. That I did get an Emmy nomination, I couldn't be h...
KYLE CHANDLER

I like fun and I like to party, ... is one of the greatest untold stories around here. What they do....
DANIEL CHANDLER

Quick, how do you pick up a cat?"
"Buy her a drink.
ELIZABETH CHANDLER

How would you feel about sharing your bed?" she asked.
Tristan blinked. "Excuse me?"
"He...
ELIZABETH CHANDLER

Demeaning is in the eye of the beholder.
MARC CHANDLER

During his four-year tenure as conductor of the symphony orchestra, Kevin did much to raise the stan...
GLENN CHANDLER

Companies are not helpless in fluctuating currencies. But if you listen to these U.S. companies, you...
MARC CHANDLER

I don't think I had a script on 'King Kong.' But usually you read a script and then you ...
KYLE CHANDLER

Newer digital drives with flexible modulation schemes significantly reduce current ripple. Center-al...
JOHN CHANDLER

The problem for me is that I can't ever really see who Gregory is, any more than I can see what a mi...
ELIZABETH CHANDLER

God ultimately raises up leaders for one primary reason: His glory. He shows His power in our weakne...
MATT CHANDLER

God is more interested in declaring than explaining.
MATT CHANDLER

We spend so much time trying to put send to death that we don't spend enough time striving to know G...
MATT CHANDLER

Without a heart transformed by the grace of Christ, we just continue to manage external and internal...
MATT CHANDLER

Trying to figure out God is like trying to catch a fish in the Pacific Ocean with an inch of dental ...
MATT CHANDLER

God doesn't NEED raw material. He MAKES material.
MATT CHANDLER

Your approval before God is woven into the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, not what...
MATT CHANDLER

Truly, God's plan of redemption is about more than me and you and our neighbor down the street. It's...
MATT CHANDLER

The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion.

Raymond Chandler

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