Raymond Chandler

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.

Police business is a hell of a problem. It__ a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there__ nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...

You like it in jail?''It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

You like it in jail?It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

You like it in jail?""It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridicu

It is not a fragrant world.

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

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

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

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes.

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

The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently he can't be sure. When he can no longer throw his high hard one he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He just doesn't walk off the mound and weep.

In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.