Zitat des Tages von Raymond Chandler:
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.
Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
A really good detective never gets married.
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.
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.
I certainly admire people who do things.
Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.
The more you reason the less you create.
It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.
The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.
It is not a fragrant world.
I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes.
The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.