Top 300 Raymond Chandler Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

— Raymond Chandler

102. “I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.”

— Raymond Chandler

103. “The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.”

— Raymond Chandler

104. “A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.”

— Raymond Chandler

105. “You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.”

— Raymond Chandler

106. “I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn’t need a gun, you’d better take one along that worked.”

— Raymond Chandler

107. “Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.”

— Raymond Chandler

108. “The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.”

— Raymond Chandler

109. “A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.”

— Raymond Chandler

110. “The trouble with cops is not that they’re dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn’t have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore. They’re topped by too many smart minds.”

— Raymond Chandler

111. “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. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.”

— Raymond Chandler

112. “Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.”

— Raymond Chandler

113. “The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel, but I didn’t move. Not being bullet proof is an idea I had had to get used to.”

— Raymond Chandler

114. “Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool – perhaps – but a fool just the same.”

— Raymond Chandler

115. “We were very much in love – the wild, mysterious, improbable kind of love that never comes but once.”

— Raymond Chandler

116. “She’d make for a jazzy week-end, but she’d be wearing for a steady diet.”

— Raymond Chandler

117. “Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.”

— Raymond Chandler

118. “What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.”

— Raymond Chandler

119. “When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.”

— Raymond Chandler

120. “The tragedy of life, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean.”

— Raymond Chandler

121. “I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”

— Raymond Chandler

122. “It is not a fragrant world.”

— Raymond Chandler

123. “Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.”

— Raymond Chandler

124. “The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.”

— Raymond Chandler

125. “Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.”

— Raymond Chandler

126. “He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn’t owe too much money.”

— Raymond Chandler

127. “The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.”

— Raymond Chandler

128. “She’s a nice girl. Not my type.” “You don’t like them nice?” He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand. “I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.” “They take you to the cleaners,” Randall said indifferently.”

— Raymond Chandler

129. “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.”

— Raymond Chandler

130. “Courage is a strange thing: One can never be sure of it.”

— Raymond Chandler

131. “Whoever had done it had meant business. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”

— Raymond Chandler

132. “The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”

— Raymond Chandler

133. “You can’t have everything, even in California.”

— Raymond Chandler

134. “He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.”

— Raymond Chandler

135. “Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.”

— Raymond Chandler

136. “You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.”

— Raymond Chandler

137. “His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.”

— Raymond Chandler

138. “When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.”

— Raymond Chandler

139. “She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”

— Raymond Chandler

140. “The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.”

— Raymond Chandler

141. “I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.”

— Raymond Chandler

142. “I’m a weak character, without guts or ambition. I caught the brass ring and it shocked me to find out it wasn’t gold. A guy like me has one big moment in his life, one perfect swing on the high trapeze. Then he spends the rest of his time trying not to fall off the sidewalk into the gutter.”

— Raymond Chandler

143. “I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn’t go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.”

— Raymond Chandler

144. “The moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.”

— Raymond Chandler

145. “The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.”

— Raymond Chandler

146. “I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.”

— Raymond Chandler

147. “I didn’t have anything really exiting to drink, like nitroglycerin or distilled tiger breath.”

— Raymond Chandler

148. “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

149. “She was kind of girl who’d eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.”

— Raymond Chandler

150. “The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.”

— Raymond Chandler