Raymond Chandler Quotes

There is nothing worse in nature than seeing a cat trying to provoke a few more hopeless attempts to escape out of a half-dead mouse. My enormous respect for our cat is largely based on a complete lack in her of this diabolical sadism. When she used to catch mice – we haven’t had any […]

I let go of her wrists, closed the door with my elbow and slid past her. It was like the first time. ‘You ought to to carry insurance on those,’ I said.

She was a blonde. The kind of blonde that would make a bishop kick in a stained glass window.

She was a suicide blonde, dyed by her own hand.

Having just read the admirable profile of Hemingway in the New Yorker, I realize that I am much too clean to be a genius, much too sober to be a champ, and far, far, too clumsy with a shotgun to live the good life.

If you liked a book, don’t meet the author.

Wouldn’t it be awful if I came to Australia and looked you up, and everything you may have imagined about me turned out to be completely disappointing. I always say that if you like a man’s books, take care never to meet him.

Alcohol is like love: the first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you just take the girl’s clothes off. (The Long Goodbye, 1953)

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won’t let himself get snotty about it.

She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without […]