Raymond Chandler Quotes

The streets were dark with something more than night.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.

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

There is something about everything that you can fix, except yourself.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

The streets were as clean as bones and the gas lamps flooded the pavement with light.

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

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 smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.

My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.

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.

There was a cruel moon and heavy offshore wind.

I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.

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

I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.

Without thinking, I went down in the elevator and walked out through the lobby to the street. I had tried to throw away the envelope, but it stuck to my fingers like a butterfly.

I know this girl better than I know my own kid sister and I know hating her is like hating the smell of a bus depot.

There is nothing duller than a fact.

Endings mattered, not motives.

A relationship, I think, is a like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.

My wife is a thing of beauty, but she is a cold one.

I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad.

I was fired. I didn’t know they were killers. I’m a lone wolf detective.

The dude looked dumbfounded, like a man who’s just had his umbrella snatched as he stepped into the rain.

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

The streets were puzzled with shadows and had an alien, dead look, as though they had been strung up while the city slept, to dry like blood on a knife.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.

I hung up. I felt like an idiot. I grabbed my hat and opened the door and went out into the sunshine.

A man who doesn’t drink just to make somebody else feel comfortable is a guy I’ve never understood.

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

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

He had a battered-looking face with a couple of days’ growth of beard. But he had steady gray eyes that held mine, chilled me a little.

He must have really hurt me. My right hand was always deadly sap-mean, but it took all I had in the way of hustle that morning to shake the extra sleep out of my left.

I believe in luck, the way other people believe in God.

I wouldn’t be caught dead with a living soul.

I don’t usually get involved in other people’s problems. I seemed to have been trying to help her out all my life without knowing it.

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

I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.

Just thinking about cops in a lie always did something to my stomach.

The iron stairway up the side of the building had zigzagged all the way to the top. It had always been there, a cage for me.

He put a hand on either arm of the chair and looked up at me from under an iron-gray brow. His eyes were cold and steady and very bright.

It was too much fun to stop. I had to find out who the body belonged to.

I don’t mind if you don’t like any of my manners. I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad.

A simple formality. Just a little formality.

Her eyes were wide open and her lips were curled back, which still didn’t hide the animal beauty of her mouth.

He was a small, narrow man with the long chin and one of those hard, yellow faces that seem to be all corners.

He had a hat on and his face was still pocked with little scabs where some surgeon had changed his face.

The kid spoke a dirty brand of English and he looked as if he might not have slept for forty-eight hours. He had a point.

Can a man who lies once take poison?

A girl is always a mystery: one second you think you know her completely, the next she surprises you with a hidden side you never knew existed.