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Above All Never Forget That A Marriage Is In One Way Very Much Like A Newspaper. It Has To Be Made Fresh Every Damn Day Of Every Damn Year.
-Raymond Chandler
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Above All Never Forget

Raymond Chandler
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Above All Never Forget That A Marriage Is In One Way Very Much Like A Newspaper. It Has To Be Made Fresh Every Damn Day Of Every Damn Year.

Understanding the Quote: "above all never forget that a marriage is in one way very..."

This quote by Raymond Chandler reflects deeply on the theme of marriage. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Marriage, Years, Way, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Raymond Chandler interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler is celebrated for insightful thoughts on marriage and years. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Marriage
Years
Way
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The Motion Picture Made In Hollywood, If It Is To Create Art At All, Must Do So Within Such Strangling Limitations Of Subject And Treatment That It Is A Blind Wonder It Ever Achieves Any Distinction Beyond The Purely Mechanical Slickness Of A Glass And Chromium Bathroom.
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There's Always Something To Do If You Don't Have To Work Or Consider The Cost. It's No Real Fun But The Rich Don't Know That. They Never Had Any. They Never Want Anything Very Hard Except Maybe Somebody Else's Wife And That's A Pretty Pale Desire Compared With The Way A Plumber's Wife Wants New Curtains For The Living Room.
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I Merely Say That All Reading For Pleasure Is Escape, Whether It Be Greek, Mathematics, Astronomy, Benedetto Croce, Or The Diary Of The Forgotten Man. To Say Otherwise Is To Be An Intellectual Snob, And A Juvenile At The Art Of Living.
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May I Wish For You The Knowledge...that Marriages Do Not Take Place, They Are Made By Hand; That There Is Always An Element Of Discipline Involved; That However Perfect The Honeymoon, The Time Will Come, However Brief It Is, When You Wish She Would Fall Downstairs And Break A Leg. This Goes For Her Too. But The Mood Will Pass, If You Give It Time.
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Throw Up Into Your Typewriter Every Morning. Clean Up Every Noon.
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Thinking
Hatred
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Damn
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Long
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Smooth
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Stars
Numbness
Space
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Blonde
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Murder Victims
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Four
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Literature
Artistic
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Kind
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Beer
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Party
Fighting
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Science
Light
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Lying
Men
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Men
Shake Your Business Up And Pour It. I Haven't Got All Day.
Big Sleep
Shakes
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Writing
Average
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Law
Justice
Imperfection
Courage Is A Strange Thing: One Can Never Be Sure Of It
Inspiration
Strange
Strange Things
The Private Detective Of Fiction Is A Fantastic Creation Who Acts And Speaks Like A Real Man. He Can Be Completely Realistic In Every Sense But One, That One Sense Being That In Life As We Know It Such A Man Would Not Be A Private Detective.
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Men
Fiction
The Growth Of Populations Has In No Way Increased The Amount [of Art], It Has Merely Increased The Adeptness With Which Substitutes Can Be Produced And Packaged.
Art
Growth
Population
There Are Two Kinds Of Truth; The Truth That Lights The Way And The Truth That Warms The Heart. The First Of These Is Science, And The Second Is Art. Without Art Science Would Be As Useless As A Pair Of High Forceps In The Hands Of A Plumber. Without Science Art Would Become A Crude Mess Of Folklore And Emotional Quackery.
Art
War
Science
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Blonde
Research
Deals
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
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Challenges
Movement
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.
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Women
Class
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Traps
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Sunday
Boston
Cities
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Girl
Eye
Clothes
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Speak
Detachment
It's Fairly Obvious That American Education Is A Cultural Flop. Americans Are Not A Well-educated People Culturally, And Their Vocational Education Often Has To Be Learned All Over Again After They Leave School And College. On The Other Hand, They Have Open Quick Minds And If Their Education Has Little Sharp Positive Value, It Has Not The Stultifying Effects Of A More Rigid Training.
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School
College
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Heard
Edges
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Cutting
Thinking
[as A Screenwriter] I Have A Sense Of Exile From Thought, A Nostalgia Of The Quiet Room And Balanced Mind. I Am A Writer, And There Comes A Time When That Which I Write Has To Belong To Me, Has To Be Written Alone And In Silence, With No One Looking Over My Shoulder, No One Telling Me A Better Way To Write It. It Doesn't Have To Be Great Writing, It Doesn't Even Have To Be Terribly Good. It Just Has To Be Mine.
Writing
Silence
Mind
An Artist Cannot Deny Art, Nor Would He Want To. A Lover Cannot Deny Love.
Art
Want
Lovers
Its Big Men Are Mostly Little Men With Fancy Offices And A Lot Of Money. A Great Many Of Them Are Stupid Little Men, With Reach-me-down Brains, Small-town Arrogance And A Sort Of Animal Knack Of Smelling Out The Taste Of The Stupidest Part Of The Public. They Have Played In Luck So Long That They Have Come To Mistake Luck For Enlightenment." - On Hollywood
Mistake
Stupid
Animal
She Jerked Away From Me Like A Startled Fawn Might, If I Had A Startled Fawn And It Jerked Away From Me.
Fawns
Might
Ifs
The Character That Lasts Is An Ordinary Guy With Some Extraordinary Qualities.
Reading
Character
Guy
I'm An Occasional Drinker, The Kind Of Guy Who Goes Out For A Beer And Wakes Up In Singapore With A Full Beard.
Beer
Guy
Wake Up
The Minute You Try To Talk Business With Him He Takes The Attitude That He Is A Gentleman And A Scholar, And The Moment You Try To Approach Him On The Level Of His Moral Integrity He Starts To Talk Business.
Attitude
Integrity
Gentleman
To Say Goodbye Is To Die A Little.
Goodbye
Littles
Chaos
He (the Agent) Just Takes Ten Per Cent Of Your Life.
Funny
Agents
Humour
She Lowered Her Lashes Until They Almost Cuddled Her Cheeks And Slowly Raised Them Again, Like A Theatre Curtain. I Was To Get To Know That Trick. That Was Supposed To Make Me Roll Over On My Back With All Four Paws In The Air.
Air
Theatre
Four
If I Wasn't Hard, I Wouldn't Be Alive. If I Couldn't Ever Be Gentle, I Wouldn't Deserve To Be Alive.
Alive
Gentle
Hard
Nice: Meaning I'm Going To Be Dating Leather-wearing Alcoholics And Complaining About Them - To You.
Nice
Dating
Romance
Dead Men Are Heavier Than Broken Hearts.
Heart
Men
Broken
Love Interest Nearly Always Weakens A Mystery Because It Introduces A Type Of Suspense That Is Antagonistic To The Detective's Struggle To Solve A Problem.
Struggle
Writing
Suspense
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.
Art
Writing
Desire
I Said Something Which Gave You To Think I Hated Cats. But Gad, Sir, I Am One Of The Most Fanatical Cat Lovers In The Business. If You Hate Them, I May Learn To Hate You. If Your Allergies Hate Them, I Will Tolerate The Situation To The Best Of My Ability.
Hate
Cat
Thinking
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.
Men
Police
Problem
Everything Written With Vitality Expresses That Vitality: There Are No Dull Subjects, Only Dull Minds.
Mind
Vitality
Dull
The Most Durable Thing In Writing Is Style, And Style Is The Single Most Valuable Investment A Writer Can Make With His Time.
Writing
Style
Investment
A Writer Who Is Afraid To Overreach Himself Is As Useless As A General Who Is Afraid To Be Wrong.
Useless
It Is Wrong To Be Harsh With The New York Critics, Unless One Admits In The Same Breath That It Is A Condition Of Their Existence That They Should Write Entertainingly About Something Which Is Rarely Worth Writing About At All.
New York
Writing
Criticism
Americans Will Eat Anything If It Is Toasted And Held Together With A Couple Of Toothpicks And Has Lettuce Sticking Out Of The Sides, Preferably A Little Wilted.
Couple
Together
Littles
The Plants Filled The Place, A Forest Of Them, With Nasty Meaty Leaves And Stalks Like The Newly Washed Fingers Of Dead Men.
Men
Forests
Nasty
All Language Begins With Speech, And The Speech Of Common Men At That, But When It Develops To The Point Of Becoming A Literary Medium It Only Looks Like Speech.
Men
Looks
Speech
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.
Love
Appreciation
Art
One Would Think A Writer Would Be Happy Here — If A Writer Is Ever Happy Anywhere.
Thinking
Would Be
Ifs
They Write Them Long Because They Can't Write Them Short.
Book
Writing
Long
He Sounded Like A Man Who Had Slept Well And Didn't Owe Too Much Money.
Men
Too Much
Big Sleep
Dames Lie About Anything - Just For Practice.
Lying
Practice
Dames
She Bent Over Me Again. Blood Began To Move Around In Me, Like A Prospective Tenant Looking Over A House.
Moving
Blood
House
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.
War
Moving
Agency
Two Very Simple Rules: A. You Don't Have To Write. B. You Can't Do Anything Else The Rest Comes Of Itself.
Writing
Simple
Two
Show Me A Man Or Woman Who Cannot Stand Mysteries And I Will Show You A Fool, A Clever Fool - Perhaps - But A Fool Just The Same.
Clever
Men
Fool
Mostly I Just Kill Time," He Said, "and It Dies Hard.
Said
Dies
Hard
Chess Is As Elaborate A Waste Of Human Intelligence As You Can Find Outside An Advertising Agency.
Agency
Chess
Waste
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
Firsts
She Gave Me A Smile I Could Feel In My Hip Pocket.
Smile
Laughter
Laughing
I Needed A Drink, I Needed A Lot Of Life Insurance, I Needed A Vacation, I Needed A Home In The Country. What I Had Was A Coat, A Hat And A Gun. I Put Them On And Went Out Of The Room.
Country
Home
Gun
An Age Which Is Incapable Of Poetry Is Incapable Of Any Kind Of Literature Except The Cleverness Of A Decadence.
Age
Literature
Kind
The Most Durable Thing In Writing Is Style, And Style Is The Most Valuable Investment A Writer Can Make With His Time. It Pays Off Slowly, Your Agent Will Sneer At It, Your Publisher Will Misunderstand It, And It Will Take People You Have Never Heard Of To Convince Them By Slow Degrees That The Writer Who Puts His Individual Mark On The Way He Writes Will Always Pay Off.
Time
Writing
People
The Agent Never Receipts His Bill, Puts His Hat On And Bows Himself Out. He Stays Around Forever, Not Only For As Long As You Can Write Anything That Anyone Will Buy, But As Long As Anyone Will Buy Any Portion Of Any Right To Anything That You Ever Did Write. He Just Takes Ten Per Cent Of Your Life.
Writing
Long
Forever
The Overall Picture, As The Boys Say, Is Of A Degraded Community Whose Idealism Even Is Largely Fake. The Pretentiousness, The Bogus Enthusiasm, The Constant Drinking, The Incessant Squabbling Over Money, The All-pervasive Agent, The Strutting Of The Big Shots (and Their Usually Utter Incompetence To Achieve Anything They Start Out To Do), The Constant Fear Of Losing All This Fairy Gold And Being The Nothing They Have Never Ceased To Be, The Snide Tricks, The Whole Damn Mess Is Out Of This World.
Drinking
Boys
Community
Under The Thinning Fog The Surf Curled And Creamed, Almost Without Sound, Like A Thought Trying To Form Inself On The Edge Of Consciousness.
Fog
Trying
Sound
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.
Funny
Men
Civilization
The Actual Writing Is What You Live For. The Rest Is Something You Have To Get Through In Order To Arrive At The Point.
Writing
Order
And The Commercials Would Have Sickened A Goat Raised On Barbed Wire And Broken Beer Bottles.
Beer
Broken
Wire
The Keynote Of American Civilization Is A Sort Of Warm-hearted Vulgarity. The Americans Have None Of The Irony Of The English, None Of Their Cool Poise, None Of Their Manner. But They Do Have Friendliness. Where An Englishman Would Give You His Card, An American Would Very Likely Give You His Shirt.
War
Civilization
America
You Can't Have Everything, Even In California
Inspiration
California
So By All Means Let's Have A Television Show Quick And Long, Even If The Commercial Has To Be Delivered By A Man In A White Coat With A Stethoscope Hanging Around His Neck, Selling Ergot Pills. After All The Public Is Entitled To What It Wants, Isn't It? The Romans Knew That And Even They Lasted Four Hundred Years After They Started To Putrefy.
Mean
Men
Years
The Moment A Man Begins To Talk About Technique That's Proof That He Is Fresh Out Of Ideas.
Men
Ideas
Technique
As Honest As You Could Expect A Man To Be In A World Where It's Out Of Style.
Men
Style
Going Out
I Have Made Three Rules Of Writing For Myself That Are Absolutes: Never Take Advice. Never Show Or Discuss Work In Progress. Never Answer A Critic.
Writing
Advice
Progress
She Was Kind Of Girl Who'd Eat All Your Cashews And Leave You With Nothing But Peanuts And Filberts.
Girl
Sarcastic
Kind
The Faster I Write The Better My Output. If I'm Going Slow, I'm In Trouble. It Means I'm Pushing The Words Instead Of Being Pulled By Them.
Writing
Mean
Pushing
The English May Not Always Be The Best Writers In The World, But They Are Incomparably The Best Dull Writers.
World
Dull
May
The Impulse To Perfection Cannot Exist Where The Definition Of Perfection Is The Arbitrary Decision Of Authority. That Which Is Born In Loneliness And From The Heart Cannot Be Defended Against The Judgment Of A Committee Of Sycophants. The Volatile Essences Which Make Literature Cannot Survive The Clichés Of A Long Series Of Story Conferences.
Loneliness
Heart
Essence
Your Rat Tail Is All The Fashion Now. I Prefer A Bushy Plume, Carried Straight Up. You Are Siamese And Your Ancestors Lived In Trees. Mine Lived In Palaces. It Has Been Suggested To Me That I Am A Bit Of A Snob. How True! I Prefer To Be.
Fashion
Cat
Tree
The Moment A Man Sets His Thoughts Down On Paper, However Secretly, He Is In A Sense Writing For Publication.
Writing
Men
Paper
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
Play
The Wet Air Was As Cold As The Ashes Of Love.
Air
Ashes
Cold
If You Liked A Book, Don't Meet The Author
Book
Literature
Ifs
Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go Who Is Not Himself Mean, Who Is Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid...he Is The Hero, He Is Everything. He Must Be A Complete Man And A Common Man And Yet An Unusual Man. He Must Be, To Use A Rather Weathered Phrase, A Man Of Honor, By Instinct, By Inevitability, Without Thought Of It, And Certainly Without Saying It. He Must Be The Best Man In His World And A Good Enough Man For Any World
Hero
Mean
Men
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