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I Sat Down On The Edge Of A Deep Soft Chair And Looked At Mrs Regan. She Was Worth A Stare. She Was Trouble.
-Raymond Chandler
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I Sat Down On

Raymond Chandler
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I Sat Down On The Edge Of A Deep Soft Chair And Looked At Mrs Regan. She Was Worth A Stare. She Was Trouble.

Understanding the Quote: "i sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and..."

This quote by Raymond Chandler reflects deeply on the theme of trouble. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Trouble, Chairs, Regan, 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 trouble and chairs. 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
Trouble
Chairs
Regan
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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.
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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.
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Practice
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Men
Thinking
There Ain't No Clean Way To Make A Hundred Million Bucks.... Somewhere Along The Line Guys Got Pushed To The Wall, Nice Little Businesses Got The Ground Cut Out From Under Them... Decent People Lost Their Jobs.... Big Money Is Big Power And Big Power Gets Used Wrong. It's The System.
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Detectives
Tvs
Hats
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.
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Tree
Neither Of The Two People In The Room Paid Any Attention To The Way I Came In, Although Only One Of Them Was Dead.
Two
People
Attention
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.
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Years
This Generation
A Really Good Detective Never Gets Married.
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Detectives
Married
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.
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Heart
Essence
She Bent Over Me Again. Blood Began To Move Around In Me, Like A Prospective Tenant Looking Over A House.
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House
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Stores
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.
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Perception
Criticism
At Least Half The Mystery Novels Published Violate The Law That The Solution, Once Revealed, Must Seem To Be Inevitable.
Book
Reading
Writing
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.
Education
School
College
It Is Not A Fragrant World.
Anger
Society
World
Television Is Really What We've Been Looking For All Our Lives.... [it's] Perfect. You Turn A Few Knobs And Lean Back And Drain Your Mind Of All Thought. And There You Are Watching The Bubbles In The Primordial Ooze.
Perfect
Mind
Television
The Motion Picture Is Like A Picture Of A Lady In A Half-piece Bathing Suit. If She Wore A Few More Clothes, You Might Be Intrigued. If She Wore No Clothes At All, You Might Be Shocked. But The Way It Is, You Are Occupied With Noticing That Her Knees Are Too Bony And That Her Toenails Are Too Large. The Modern Film Tries Too Hard To Be Real. Its Techniques Of Illusion Are So Perfect That It Requires No Contribution From The Audience But A Mouthful Of Popcorn.
Real
Clothes
Perfect
Let Us Never Accept The Point Of View That Mysteries Are Written By Hacks. The Poorest Of Us Shed Our Blood Over Every Chapter. The Best Of Us Start From Scratch With Every New Book.
Book
Views
Blood
Some Days I Feel Like Playing It Smooth. Some Days I Feel Like Playing It Like A Waffle Iron.
Iron
Waffles
Smooth
There Is Something About The Literary Life That Repels Me, All This Desperate Building Of Castles On Cobwebs, The Long-drawn Acrimonious Struggle To Make Something Important Which We All Know Will Be Gone Forever In A Few Years, The Miasma Of Failure Which Is To Me Almost As Offensive As The Cheap Gaudiness Of Popular Success.
Art
Struggle
Writing
An Artist Cannot Deny Art, Nor Would He Want To. A Lover Cannot Deny Love.
Art
Want
Lovers
The Moment A Man Sets His Thoughts Down On Paper, However Secretly, He Is In A Sense Writing For Publication.
Writing
Men
Paper
I Don't Mind Your Showing Me Your Legs. They're Very Swell Legs And It's A Pleasure To Make Their Acquaintance. I Don't Mind If You Don't Like My Manners. They're Pretty Bad. I Grieve Over Them During The Long Winter Evenings. But Don't Waste Your Time Trying To Cross-examine Me.
Winter
Night
Grieving
When A Book, Any Sort Of Book, Reaches A Certain Intensity Of Artistic Performance, It Becomes Literature. That Intensity May Be A Matter Of Style, Situation, Character, Emotional Tone, Or Idea, Or Half A Dozen Other Things. It May Also Be A Perfection Of Control Over The Movement Of A Story Similar To The Control A Great Pitcher Has Over The Ball.
Book
Character
Emotional
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
However Toplofty And Idealistic A Man May Be, He Can Always Rationalize His Right To Earn Money.
Money
Men
May
Dashiell Hammett Took Murder Out Of Thevenetian Vase And Dropped It Into The Alley.
Vases
Murder
Alleys
To Say Goodbye Is To Die A Little.
Goodbye
Littles
Chaos
When The Plot Flags, Bring In A Man With A Gun.
Gun
Men
Plot
Could She *be* Anymore Out Of My League?
League
Dating
Romance
The English May Not Always Be The Best Writers In The World, But They Are Incomparably The Best Dull Writers.
World
Dull
May
In Everything That Can Be Called Art There Is A Quality Of Redemption.
Art
Quality
Redemption
A City With All The Personality Of A Paper Cup. (on Los Angeles)
Cities
Personality
Paper
The French Have A Phrase For It. The Bastards Have A Phrase For Everything And They Are Always Right. To Say Goodbye Is To Die A Little.
Goodbye
Phrases
Littles
A Writer Who Is Afraid To Overreach Himself Is As Useless As A General Who Is Afraid To Be Wrong.
Useless
I Looked Down At The Chessboard. The Move With The Knight Was Wrong. I Put It Back Where I Had Moved It From. Knights Had No Meaning In This Game. It Wasn't A Game For Knights.
Moving
Knights
Games
There Are No Vital And Significant Forms Of Art; There Is Only Art, And Precious Little Of That.
Art
Littles
Significant
There Was A Sad Fellow Over On A Bar Stool Talking To The Bartender, Who Was Polishing A Glass And Listening With That Plastic Smile People Wear When They Are Trying Not To Scream.
Glasses
Talking
People
You're Broke, Eh?" I Been Shaking Two Nickels Together For A Month, Trying To Get Them To Mate.
Two
Trying
Together
He Was A Guy Who Talked With Commas, Like A Heavy Novel. Over The Phone Anyway.
Phones
Guy
Heavy
The Flood Of Print Has Turned Reading Into A Process Of Gulping Rather Than Savoring.
Book
Reading
Design
When I Left Merle Was Wearing A Bungalow Apron And Rolling Pie Crust. She Came To The Door Wiping Her Hands On The Apron And Kissed Me On The Mouth And Began To Cry And Ran Back Into The House, Leaving The Doorway Empty [...] I Had A Funny Feeling As I Saw The House Disappear, As Though I Had Written A Poem And It Was Very Good And I Had Lost It And Would Never Remember It Again. (p. 262)
Doors
Hands
Pie
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.
Girl
Drinking
Beer
You Can't Have Everything, Even In California
Inspiration
California
As It Is She Will Probably Turn Out To Be One Of These Acid-faced Virgins That Sit Behind Little Desks In Public Libraries And Stamp Dates In Books.
Book
Library
Littles
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
It Was A Smooth Silvery Voice That Matched Her Hair. It Had A Tiny Tinkle In It, Like Bells In A Doll's House. I Thought That Was Silly As Soon As I Thought Of It.
Silly
Hair
Voice
She Gave Me A Smile I Could Feel In My Hip Pocket.
Smile
Laughter
Laughing
Shake Your Business Up And Pour It. I Haven't Got All Day.
Big Sleep
Shakes
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 Challenge Is To Write About Real Things Magically.
Real
Writing
Challenges
It Is A Mass Language Only In The Same Sense That Its Baseball Slang Is Born Of Baseball Players. That Is, It Is A Language Which Is Being Molded By Writers To Do Delicate Things And Yet Be Within The Grasp Of Superficially Educated People. It Is Not A Natural Growth, Much As Its Proletarian Writers Would Like To Think So. But Compared With It At Its Best, English Has Reached The Alexandrian Stage Of Formalism And Decay.
Baseball
Communication
Player
It Seemed Like A Nice Neighborhood To Have Bad Habits In.
Nice
Habit
Big Sleep
Love Interest Nearly Always Weakens A Mystery Because It Introduces A Type Of Suspense That Is Antagonistic To The Detective's Struggle To Solve The Problem. It Stacks The Cards, And In Nine Cases Out Of Ten, It Eliminates At Least Two Useful Suspects. The Only Effective Love Interest Is That Which Creates A Personal Hazard For The Detective - But Which, At The Same Time, You Instinctively Feel To Be A Mere Episode. A Really Good Detective Never Gets Married.
Struggle
Two
Nine
There Are People Who Can Write Their Memoirs With A Reasonable Amount Of Honesty, And There Are People Who Simply Cannot Take Themselves Seriously Enough. I Think I Might Be The First To Admit That The Sort Of Reticence Which Prevents A Man From Exploiting His Own Personality Is Really An Inverted Sort Of Egotism.
Honesty
Writing
Men
The More You Reason The Less You Create.
Success
Creativity
Ideas
Their Constant Yelping About A Free Press Means, With A Few Honorable 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 The Circulation And You Know What Circulation Depends On.
Sex
Hate
Mean
That's One Thing I Like About Hollywood. The Writer Is There Revealed In His Ultimate Corruption. He Asks No Praise, Because His Praise Comes To Him In The Form Of A Salary Check. In Hollywood The Average Writer Is Not Young, Not Honest, Not Brave, And A Bit Overdressed. But He Is Darn Good Company, Which Book Writers As A Rule Are Not. He Is Better Than What He Writes. Most Book Writers Are Not As Good.
Book
Writing
Average
And The Commercials Would Have Sickened A Goat Raised On Barbed Wire And Broken Beer Bottles.
Beer
Broken
Wire
We Have The Whitest Kitchens And The Most Shining Bathrooms In The World. But In The Lovely White Kitchen The Average [person] 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." —
Sleep
White
Average
I Suppose All Writers Are Crazy, But If They Are Any Good, I Believe They Have A Terrible Honesty.
Honesty
Crazy
Believe
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
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
You Can Have A Hangover From Other Things Than Alcohol. I Had One From Women.
Hangover
Alcohol
Big Sleep
I Guess God Made Boston On A Wet Sunday.
Sunday
Boston
Cities
Tall, Aren't You? I Didn't Mean To Be.
Mean
Tall
It Was A Blonde. A Blonde To Make A Bishop Kick A Hole In A Stained-glass Window.
Beauty
Glasses
Blonde
They Don't Want You Until You Have Made A Name, And By The Time You Have Made A Name, You Have Developed Some Kind Of Talent They Can't Use. All They Will Do Is Spoil It, If You Let Them.
Names
Hollywood
Use
I Had A Funny Feeling As I Saw The House Disappear, As Though I Had Written A Poem And It Was Very Good And I Had Lost It And Would Never Remember It Again.
House
Feelings
Aprons
It Was About Eleven O'clock In The Morning, Mid October, With The Sun Not Shining And A Look Of Hard Wet Rain In The Clearness Of The Foothills. I Was Wearing My Powder-blue Suit, With Dark Blue Shirt, Tie And Display Handkerchief, Black Brogues, Black Wool Socks With Dark Little Clocks On Them. I Was Neat, Clean, Shaved And Sober, And I Didn't Care Who Knew It. I Was Everything The Well-dressed Private Detective Ought To Be. I Was Calling On Four Million Dollars.
Morning
Rain
Dark
I Was As Hollow And Empty As The Spaces Between Stars.
Stars
Numbness
Space
They Write Them Long Because They Can't Write Them Short.
Book
Writing
Long
I Regard Psychiatry As Fifty Percent Bunk, Thirty Percent Fraud, Ten Percent Parrot Talk, And The Remaining Ten Percent Just A Fancy Lingo For The Common Sense We Have Had For Hundreds And Perhaps Thousands Of Years, If We Ever Had The Guts To Read.
Years
Common Sense
Fifty
Dead Men Are Heavier Than Broken Hearts.
Heart
Men
Broken
Woe, Woe, Woe... In A Little While We Shall All Be Dead. Therefore Let Us Behave As Though We Were Dead Already.
Death
Dying
Littles
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
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.
Funny
Women
Class
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
I'm In A Wild Mood Tonight. I Want To Go Dance In The Foam. I Hear The Banshees Calling.
Foam
Tonight
Calling
Trending Author
William Dean Howells
Enid Blyton
Jonas Salk
W. Edwards Deming
P. C. Cast
Kevin J. Anderson
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