Raymond Chandler Quotes

1888–1959 England

Raymond Thornton Chandler (23 July 1888 – 26 March 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter who specialized in the crime fiction genre.

England
Novelists
Screenwriters
Short story writers

Also known as: Chandler, Raymond, Farewell My Lovely, High Window, Little Sister, Long Goodbye, Playback

Random Raymond Chandler quote

55 quotes

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.

The Big Sleep (1939)

He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in.

The High Window (1942)

The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with.

The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.

The Big Sleep (1939)

"You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."

The Big Sleep (1939)

American girls are terrific. American wives take too damn much territory.

The Long Goodbye (1953)

The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.

Maybe you don't like tall girls with honey-colored hair and skin like the first strawberry peach the grocer sneaks out of the box for himself. If you don't, I'm sorry for you.

Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.

The Big Sleep (1939)

We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.

Farewell, My Lovely (1940)

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.

The High Window (1942)

Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.

Hollywood Remembered : An Oral History of Its Golden Age (2002)

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Farewell, My Lovely (1940)

She had a lot of face and chin. She had pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak, and large moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones.

The High Window (1942)

'He used to wear a little blond moustache but Mother made him cut it off. She said -'
'Don't tell me. The minister needed it to stuff a cushion.'

The Little Sister (1949)

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.

The Big Sleep (1939)

She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.

The Big Sleep (1939)

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

I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.

The Long Goodbye (1954)

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

The Long Goodbye (1954)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Raymond Chandler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.