Raymond Chandler

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

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

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detach

His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.

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

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.

I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar__hat's wonderful.

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again.

The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut.I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it.

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

A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

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

The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as hard to get as a haircut.

He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He's going to let it go on a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he's apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.

You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime. (I'll Be Waiting)

But show business has always been like that - any kind of show business. If these people didn't live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didn't ride them too hard__ell, they wouldn't be able to catch those emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid or project them across the footlights.