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Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler Books

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the big sleep

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The Long Goodbye

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Nevada-Gas

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Selected Letters

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The High Window

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Related Quotes

“Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set.”

PhilosophyHumorTelevisionApesChandlerRaymond ChandlerOoze
Author:Raymond Chandler
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“I didn't mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a family. Not much: a few books, pictures, radio, chessmen, old letters, stuff like that. Nothing. Such as they were, they had all my memories.”

HomePastMemoriesBooksRadioPicturesOld LettersChessmenPhilip MarloweSo Noir It HurtsCarmen SternwoodThe Hobart Arms
Book:the big sleep
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“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 ridiculous." (Great Thought, February 19, 1938)”

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Book:The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler; and English Summer: A Gothic Romance
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“I believe...that to be very poor and very beautiful is most probably a moral failure more than an artistic success. Shakespeare would have done well in any generation because he would have refused to die in a corner; he would have taken the false gods and made them over; he would have taken the current formulae and forced them into something lesser men thought them incapable of. Alive today he would undoubtedly have written and directed motion pictures, plays, and God knows what. Instead of saying, "This medium is not good," he would have used it and made it good. If some people called some his work cheap (which some of it was), he wouldn't have cared a rap, because he would know that without some vulgarity there is no complete man. He would have hated refinement, as such, because it is always a withdrawal, and he was too tough to shrink from anything.”

ArtCourageGreatnessIntegrityBraveryInnovationHip HopGreat ArtPornographyShakespeareRefinementVulgarityModern ArtCourage To Be OneselfThe TruthFresh IdeasSasha GreyStruggling ArtistStruggling WriterLars Von TrierBeautiful LosersPorn As ArtSex In Cinema
Book:Raymond Chandler Speaking
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“Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way.”

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Book:the big sleep
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“In a general way I am completely disgusted with the anthology racket. People who have given nothing to the world in the way of writing (and never will) presume to use other men's work at nominal, and by God I mean nominal, prices, for their own benefit and profit and to justify themselves as editors or critics or connoisseurs, in furtherance of which they write pukey little introductions and sit back with an indulgent smile and all nine pockets open.”

Anthologies
Author:Raymond Chandler
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“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.”

MurderCorruptionPrivate InvestigatorNoir Mystery
Book:The Lady in the Lake
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“So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer." "Me? How?" "The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read." "Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them." She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at." "That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops." "Oh, nuts.”

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Book:the big sleep
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“Marlowe's the name. The guy you've been trying to follow around for a couple of days." "I ain't following anybody, doc." "This jalopy is. Maybe you can't control it. Have it your own way. I'm now going to eat breakfast in the coffee shop across the street: orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast, honey, three or four cups of coffee, and a toothpick. I am then going up to my office, which is on the seventh floor of the building right opposite you. If you have anything that's worrying you beyond endurance, drop up and chew it over. I'll only be oiling my machine gun.”

Philip MarloweMachine GunSo Noir It HurtsJalopyNoir BreakfastPoor Harry Jones
Book:the big sleep
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