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Raymond Chandler Biography

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler (US: /ˈtʃændlər/, UK: /ˈtʃɑːndlər/; July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California.

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Raymond Chandler Quotes

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.

Art, Class, Everything, Motion, Play, Thereby

I'm in a wild mood tonight. I want to go dance in the foam. I hear the banshees calling.

Calling, Foam, Hear, Tonight, Wild

All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity.

Dream, Lying, Men, Argued, Necessity

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

Back, Four, Girl, Inches, Looks

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.

Art, Heart, Light, Science, Truth

Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.

Dies, Hard, Kill, Said, Time

Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.

Art, Greatly, Motion, Picture, This Generation, Years

The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.

Adolescent, Literature, Public, Reading, Society

But nothing seems to do any good.

Good, Nothing, Seems

She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

Blood, Gortchakoff, Hung, Loose, Moving, War

Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth.

Home, Critics, Truth, Piteously, Build

A really good detective never gets married.

Detective, Detectives, Gets, Good, Married, Police

I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful.

Air, Bars, Clean, Firsts, Like

California, the department store state.

California, Department, Dignity, States, Store

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.

Critic, Critical, Criticism, Perception, Writing

Woe, woe, woe. . . in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.

Already, Death, Dying, Let, Littles, Woe

Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men.

Business, Like, Men, Police, Problem

Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.

City, Hate, Individual, Muck, Order, Real

It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

Call, Civilization, Coin, Death, Funny, Men

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.

Appreciation, Art, Artist, Love, Lover, Page

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