Top 300 Raymond Chandler Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He’s going to let it go on a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he’s apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.”

— Raymond Chandler

302. “No trial, no sensational headlines, no mud-slinging just to sell newspapers without the slightest regard for truth or fair play or for the feelings of innocent people.”

— Raymond Chandler

303. “Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.”

— Raymond Chandler

304. “It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.”

— Raymond Chandler

305. “I was a swell guy. I enjoyed being me.”

— Raymond Chandler

306. “You were lucky about that gun. All the people we know have been playing with it, wiping prints off and putting them on. I even put a set on myself just to be fashionable.”

— Raymond Chandler

307. “He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket.”

— Raymond Chandler

308. “Take it easy, Doc. Around here we only hit our wives in private.”

— Raymond Chandler

309. “He reached for the card without excitement, read it, turned it over and read the back with as much care as the front. There was nothing on the back to read.”

— Raymond Chandler

310. “It’s like this with us baby. We’re coppers and everybody hates our guts... nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo.”

— Raymond Chandler

311. “Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.”

— Raymond Chandler

312. “Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.”

— Raymond Chandler

313. “I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one.”

— Raymond Chandler

314. “Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake.”

— Raymond Chandler

315. “All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.”

— Raymond Chandler

316. “He had a heart as big as one of Mae West’s hips.”

— Raymond Chandler

317. “I’m a very smart guy. I haven’t a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals. I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you’ll think of me, I’ll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up.”

— Raymond Chandler

318. “We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return.”

— Raymond Chandler

319. “Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else’s rain.”

— Raymond Chandler

320. “Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money.”

— Raymond Chandler

321. “You’re a full portion of what I don’t like,’ she said. ‘Get out of my way.’ I didn’t move. She didn’t move. We were both sitting down – and not even close to each other.”

— Raymond Chandler

322. “What rattled and thumped was a knotted towel full of melting ice cubes. Somebody who loved me very much had put them on the back of my head. Somebody who loved me less had bashed in the back of my skull. It could have been the same person. People have moods.”

— Raymond Chandler

323. “A half smart guy,” she said with a tired sniff. “That’s all I ever draw. Never once a guy that’s smart all the way around the course. Never once.”

— Raymond Chandler

324. “I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you’re not thinking.”

— Raymond Chandler

325. “The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he’d kicked his grandmother.”

— Raymond Chandler

326. “The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don’t play at it.”

— Raymond Chandler

327. “A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.”

— Raymond Chandler

328. “What I like about this place is everything runs so true to type,” I said. “The cop on the gate, the shine on the door, the cigarette and check girls, the fat greasy sensual Jew with the tall stately bored showgirl, the well-dressed, drunk and horribly rude director cursing the barman, the silent guy with the gun, the night club owner with the soft gray hair and the B-picture mannerisms, and now you – the tall dark torcher with the negligent sneer, the husky voice, the hard-boiled vocabulary.”

— Raymond Chandler

329. “Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains.”

— Raymond Chandler

330. “Ich blickte den Revolver an, und der Revolver blickte mich an.”

— Raymond Chandler