The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, p. 74

I am no superb technician or inexorable scene-squeezer like Billy Wilder. I am the man who produces the raw material on which the superb technique can be exercised, the man who writes the scenes that wait to be squeezed. If I were more, I should also be less, and the more I should be would, from my point of view, not be worth the less I should be.