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. – Raymond Chandler
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 the tricks and has nothing to say. – Raymond Chandler
Woe, woe, woe… in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already. – Raymond Chandler
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic. – Raymond Chandler
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. – Raymond Chandler
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come. – Raymond Chandler
The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture. – Raymond Chandler
Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck. – Raymond Chandler
The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement. – Raymond Chandler
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away. – Raymond Chandler
It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. – Raymond Chandler
The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. – Raymond Chandler
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. – Raymond Chandler
The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication. – Raymond Chandler
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring. – Raymond Chandler
