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Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler Quotes

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Famous Raymond Chandler Quotes

“Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.”

RealWould BeHateOrderIndividualCitiesOughtLuckyHollywoodStructureDamnGet BetterLos AngelesMailSomewhere ElseCatalogues
Book:The Little Sister: A Novel
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“Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.”

ArtMadePlayClassCreationSkillsHollywoodFundamentalsProducersParadisePublishersExploitsScreenplaysDegradeMotion PicturesAdept
Book:Later Novels & Other Writings
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“The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too much to heart. He should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously honest about his work, but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return. He won't get it. And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.”

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Author:Raymond Chandler
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“Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood”

MenLittlesLongBigsAnimalMistakeBrainStupidTasteOfficeEnlightenmentHollywoodTownsLuckArroganceFancyLots Of MoneySmall TownKnackLittle ManStupidest
Author:Raymond Chandler
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“That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.”

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Author:Raymond Chandler
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“The overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the constant drinking, the incessant squabbling over money, the all-pervasive agent, the strutting of the big shots (and their usually utter incompetence to achieve anything they start out to do), the constant fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing they have never ceased to be, the snide tricks, the whole damn mess is out of this world.”

WorldWholeBigsCommunityBoysAchieveThis WorldLosingShotsGoldHollywoodConstantDrinkingTricksEnthusiasmAgentsMessDamnFakeFairyIdealismIncompetenceIncessantBig ShotsPretentiousnessStrutting
Book:The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959
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