Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go, 76

We still have dreams, but we know that most of them will come to nothing. And we also most fortunately know that it really doesn't matter. - Chandler.

Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go, 108

"by literature I mean quite simply any sort of writing at all that reaches a sufficient intensity of performance to glow with its own heat." - Chandler

Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go, 77

This is not an age of reason or tolerance, but in Hollywood you don't learn to be a hero. You learn to be expedient--or you get to hell out. - Chandler

Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go, 146

Having just read the admirable profile of Hemingway in the New Yorker I realize that I am much to clean to be a genius, much too sober to be a champ, and far, far too clumsy with a shotgun to live the good life. - Chandler

The Long Goodbye, ?

'A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice, and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.'

Farewell, My Lovely, 122

The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.

The Lady in the Lake, ?

This is the ultimate end of the fog belt, and the beginning of that semi-desert region where the sun is as light and dry as old sherry in the morning, as hot as a blast furnace at noon, and drops like an angry brick at nightfall.

Farewell, My Lovely, 239

After a while there was a faint smell of ocean. Not very much, but as if they had kept this much just to remind people this had once been a clean open beach where the waves came in and creamed and the wind blew and you could smell something besides hot fat and cold sweat.

The Little Sister, ?

I've got a few troubles. The only reason I'm driving this car with you beside me is that I've got so much trouble a little more will seem like icing.

Farewell, My Lovey, ? (somewhere near the beginning)

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

The Little Sister, ?

The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives.

The High Window, ?

Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them.

The High Window, ?

And there are ratty hotels where nobody except people named Smith and Jones sign the register and where the night clerk is half watchdog and half pander.

The Long Goodbye, ?

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

The Long Goodbye, p. 431 (Penguin Crime Fiction UK)

cute little French petanque guy!

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right.

The Long Goodbye, p. 359 (Penguin Crime Fiction UK)

And when she spoke her voice had the lucid emptiness of that mechanical voice on the telephone that tells you the time, and if you keep listening, which people don't because they have no reason to, it will keep on telling you the passing seconds for ever, without the slightest change of inflection.

The Long Goodbye, p.275 (Penguin Crime Fiction UK)

The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can't afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can't have quality with mass production. You don't want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn't sell its goods next year unless it made what it sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average American housewife can't produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.

The Little Sister, p.?

At 3 a.m. I was walking the floor and listening to Katchaturian working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it.

The Little Sister, p.?

I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that had been closed too long. But the coloured lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful.

The Little Sister, p. 112

"The fear of today," he said, "always overrides the fear of tomorrow. It's a basic fact of the dramatic emotions that the part is greater than the whole. If you see a glamour star on the screen in a position of great danger, you fear for her with one part of your mind, the emotional part. Notwithstanding that your reasoning mind knows that she is the star of the picture and nothing very bad is going to happen to her. If suspense and menace didn't defeat reason, there would be very little drama."

The Long Goodbye, p. 274 (Penguin Crime Fiction UK)

I own newspapers, but I don't like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honourable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.

Poodle Springs, p. 91-92 (Berkley Mystery)

I swished a little more of his Scotch around in my mouth. If I was going to drink it I might as well try to prevent cavities while I was at it.

Poodle Springs, p. 27 (Berkley Mystery)

I could hear the hum of the air conditioner somewhere out of sight, like a locust behind the building.

I pushed through it into the suddenly cool indoors. It felt good after the hard desert heat, but it felt artificial too, like the soothing touch of an embalmer.

Lady in the Lake, p. 63 (Vintage Crime)

I could have taken a bus part way, but the darn things never come along except going in the wrong direction.

Trouble is My Business, p. 180 (Vintage Crime)

His chin came down and I hit it. I hit it as if I was driving the last spike on the first transcontinental railroad. I can still feel it when I flex my knuckles.

Trouble is My Business, p. 25 (Vintage Crime)

We gave Beverly Hills the swift and climbed along the foothills, saw the distant lights of the university buildings and swung north into Bel-Air. We began to slide up long narrow streets with high walls and no sidewalks and big gates. Lights on mansions glowed politely through the early night. Nothing stirred. There was no sound but the soft purr of the tires on concrete.

Trouble is My Business, p. 19 (Vintage Crime)

The level in the bottle was a lot lower now. It was smooth and you hardly noticed it going down. It didn't take half your tonsils with it, like some of the stuff I had to drink. I took some more. My head felt all right now. I felt fine.

Trouble is My Business, p. 12 (Vintage Crime)/ Lady in the Lake, p. 134 (Vintage Crime)

I waded over to the desk and put an elbow on it and was stared at by a pale thin clerk with one of these mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail.

There was a desk and a night clerk with one of those mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail.

This is actually a 'log'

I am just using this as a place to record some quotations from Raymond Chandler's book, because I keep losing them when write them on scraps of paper, not because I expect anyone to read this. This ridiculously silly blog title is actually a title of one of his books, oh my!