Top 300 Raymond Chandler Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

— Raymond Chandler

2. “To say goodbye is to die a little.”

— Raymond Chandler

Featured in: Goodbye Quotes

3. “If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.”

— Raymond Chandler

4. “If you’re not tough it’s hard to survive in this world; and if you’re not kind then you don’t deserve to survive.”

— Raymond Chandler

5. “A good title is the title of a successful book.”

— Raymond Chandler

6. “Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

— Raymond Chandler

7. “The streets were dark with something more then night.”

— Raymond Chandler

8. “There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren’t as good as others.”

— Raymond Chandler

9. “The more you reason the less you create.”

— Raymond Chandler

10. “Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn’t like it is either crazy or sober.”

— Raymond Chandler

11. “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.”

— Raymond Chandler

Featured in: Goodbye Quotes

12. “Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”

— Raymond Chandler

13. “Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had.”

— Raymond Chandler

14. “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

15. “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He must be the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world.” from Raymond Chandler’s, “The Simple Act of Murder.”

— Raymond Chandler

16. “As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”

— Raymond Chandler

17. “All reading for pleasure is entertainment.”

— Raymond Chandler

Featured in: Reading Quotes

18. “The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.”

— Raymond Chandler

19. “I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.”

— Raymond Chandler

20. “The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.”

— Raymond Chandler

21. “A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.”

— Raymond Chandler

22. “There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican.”

— Raymond Chandler

23. “A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.”

— Raymond Chandler

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— Raymond Chandler

25. “A really good detective never gets married.”

— Raymond Chandler

26. “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

27. “There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.”

— Raymond Chandler

28. “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

29. “I went out the kitchen to make coffee – yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.”

— Raymond Chandler

30. “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.”

— Raymond Chandler

31. “If you liked a book, don’t meet the author.”

— Raymond Chandler

32. “I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”

— Raymond Chandler

33. “I’m killing time and it’s dying hard.”

— Raymond Chandler

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

— Raymond Chandler

35. “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.”

— Raymond Chandler

36. “Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”

— Raymond Chandler

37. “I certainly admire people who do things.”

— Raymond Chandler

38. “I wasn’t doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot dangling.”

— Raymond Chandler

39. “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

40. “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

— Raymond Chandler

41. “It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll’s house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.”

— Raymond Chandler

42. “I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.”

— Raymond Chandler

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

— Raymond Chandler

44. “I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem.”

— Raymond Chandler

45. “He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.”

— Raymond Chandler

46. “Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.”

— Raymond Chandler

47. “A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.”

— Raymond Chandler

48. “Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”

— Raymond Chandler

49. “It’s so hard for women – even nice women – to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.”

— Raymond Chandler

50. “Two very simple rules: A. You don’t have to write. B. You can’t do anything else The rest comes of itself.”

— Raymond Chandler