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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.

-Raymond Chandler

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The Impulse To Perfection

Raymond Chandler

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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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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.

The Creative Artist Seems To Be Almost The Only Kind Of Man That You Could Never Meet On Neutral Ground. You Can Only Meet Him As An Artist. He Sees Nothing Objectively Because His Own Ego Is Always In The Foreground Of Every Picture

He Was A Guy Who Talked With Commas, Like A Heavy Novel. Over The Phone Anyway.

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.

Mostly I Just Kill Time," He Said, "and It Dies Hard.

A Really Good Detective Never Gets Married.

The English May Not Always Be The Best Writers In The World, But They Are Incomparably The Best Dull Writers.

The Making Of A Picture Ought Surely To Be A Rather Fascinating Adventure. It Is Not; It Is An Endless Contention Of Tawdry Egos, Some Of Them Powerful, Almost All Of Them Vociferous, And Almost None Of Them Capable Of Anything Much More Creative Than Credit-stealing And Self-promotion.

I've Found That There Are Only Two Kinds That Are Any Good: Slang That Has Established Itself In The Language, And Slang That You Make Up Yourself. Everything Else Is Apt To Be Passe Before It Gets Into Print.

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.

The Publishers And Others Should Quit Worrying About Losing Customers To Tv. The Guy Who Can Sit Through A Trio Of Deodorant Commercials To Look At Flashgun Casey Or Swallow A Flock Of Beer And Loan-shark Spiels In Order To Watch A Couple Of Fourth-rate Club Fighters Rub Noses On The Ropes Is Not Losing Any Time From Book Reading.

And The Commercials Would Have Sickened A Goat Raised On Barbed Wire And Broken Beer Bottles.

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.

If You Don't Leave, I'll Get Somebody Who Will.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Art At Some Time And In Some Manner Becomes Mass Entertainment, And If It Does Not It Dies And Is Forgotten.

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." —

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.

Such Is The Brutalization Of Commercial Ethics In This Country That No One Can Feel Anything More Delicate Than The Velvet Touch Of A Soft Buck.

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.

There Is No Trap So Deadly As The Trap You Set For Yourself.

A City With All The Personality Of A Paper Cup. (on Los Angeles)

I Was Neat, Clean, Shaved And Sober And I Didn't Care Who Knew It.

You Can Always Tell A Detective On Tv. He Never Takes His Hat Off.

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.

The Plants Filled The Place, A Forest Of Them, With Nasty Meaty Leaves And Stalks Like The Newly Washed Fingers Of Dead Men.

She Had Eyes Like Strange Sins.

The Truth Of Art Keeps Science From Becoming Inhuman, And The Truth Of Science Keeps Art From Becoming Ridiculous.

California, The Department Store State.

Until You Guys Own Your Own Souls You Don't Own Mine. Until You Guys Can Be Trusted Every Time And Always, In All Times And Conditions, To Seek The Truth Out And Find It And Let The Chips Fall Where They May—until That Time Comes, I Have The Right To Listen To My Conscience, And Protect My Client The Best Way I Can. Until I'm Sure You Won't Do Him More Harm Than You'll Do The Truth Good. Or Until I'm Hauled Before Somebody That Can Make Me Talk.

If I Wasn't Hard, I Wouldn't Be Alive. If I Couldn't Ever Be Gentle, I Wouldn't Deserve To Be Alive.

In Everything That Can Be Called Art There Is A Quality Of Redemption. It May Be Pure Tragedy, If It Is High Tragedy, And It May Be Pity And Irony, And It May Be The Raucous Laughter Of The Strong Man. But Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go Who Is Not Himself Mean, Who Is Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid.

I'm A Licensed Private Investigator And Have Been For Quite A While. I'm A Lone Wolf, Unmarried, Getting Middle-aged, And Not Rich. I've Been In Jail More Than Once And I Don't Do Divorce Business. I Like Liquor And Women And Chess And A Few Other Things. The Cops Don't Like Me Too Well, But I Know A Couple I Get Along With. I'm A Native Son, Born In Santa Rosa, Both Parents Dead, No Brothers Or Sisters, And When I Get Knocked Off In A Dark Alley Sometime, If It Happens, As It Could To Anyone In My Business, Nobody Will Feel That The Bottom Has Dropped Out Of His Or Her Life.

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.

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.

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.

They Write Them Long Because They Can't Write Them Short.

You Don't Get Rich, You Don't Often Have Much Fun. Sometimes You Get Beaten Up Or Shot At Or Tossed Into The Jail House. Once In A Long While You Get Dead. Every Other Month You Decide To Give It Up And Find Some Sensible Occupation While You Can Still Walk Without Shaking Your Head. Then The Door Buzzer Rings And You Open The Inner Door To The Waiting Room And There Stands A New Face With A New Problem, A New Load Of Grief, And A Small Piece Of Money.

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.

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.

The Most Durable Thing In Writing Is Style, And Style Is The Single Most Valuable Investment A Writer Can Make With His Time.

If You Liked A Book, Don't Meet The Author

Dashiell Hammett Took Murder Out Of Thevenetian Vase And Dropped It Into The Alley.

An Artist Cannot Deny Art, Nor Would He Want To. A Lover Cannot Deny Love.

When In Doubt, Have A Man Come Through The Door With A Gun In His Hand.

The Moment A Man Sets His Thoughts Down On Paper, However Secretly, He Is In A Sense Writing For Publication.

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.

Dames Lie About Anything - Just For Practice.

I'm In A Wild Mood Tonight. I Want To Go Dance In The Foam. I Hear The Banshees Calling.

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.

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.

I Always Find What I Want. But When I Find It, I Don't Want It Any More.

To Say Goodbye Is To Die A Little.

It Was A Blonde. A Blonde To Make A Bishop Kick A Hole In A Stained-glass Window.

I'm An Occasional Drinker, The Kind Of Guy Who Goes Out For A Beer And Wakes Up In Singapore With A Full Beard.

The Kind Of Lawyer You Hope The Other Fellow Has.

However Toplofty And Idealistic A Man May Be, He Can Always Rationalize His Right To Earn Money.

She Gave Me A Smile I Could Feel In My Hip Pocket.

There Are No Vital And Significant Forms Of Art; There Is Only Art, And Precious Little Of That.

It Is A Language Which Is Being Molded By Writers To Do Delicate Things And Yet Be In The Grasp Of Superficially Educated People.

Delicate Things

When A Book, Any Sort Of Book, Reaches A Certain Intensity Of Artistic Performance It Becomes Literature.

There Was A Desert Wind Blowing That Night. It Was One Of Those Hot Dry Santa Anas That Come Down Through The Mountain Passes And Curl Your Hair And Make Your Nerves Jump And Your Skin Itch. On Nights Like That Every Booze Party Ends In A Fight. Meek Little Wives Feel The Edge Of The Carving Knife And Study Their Husbands' Necks. Anything Can Happen. You Can Even Get A Full Glass Of Beer At A Cocktail Lounge.

You Can't Have Everything, Even In California

Shake Your Business Up And Pour It. I Haven't Got All Day.

You're Broke, Eh?" I Been Shaking Two Nickels Together For A Month, Trying To Get Them To Mate.

A Writer Who Is Afraid To Overreach Himself Is As Useless As A General Who Is Afraid To Be Wrong.

Chess Is As Elaborate A Waste Of Human Intelligence As You Can Find Outside An Advertising Agency.

Two Very Simple Rules: A. You Don't Have To Write. B. You Can't Do Anything Else The Rest Comes Of Itself.

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.

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.

The Moment A Man Begins To Talk About Technique That's Proof That He Is Fresh Out Of Ideas.

It Was A Cool Day And Very Clear. You Could See A Long Way-but Not As Far As Velma Had Gone.

[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.

At Least Half The Mystery Novels Published Violate The Law That The Solution, Once Revealed, Must Seem To Be Inevitable.

Throw Up Into Your Typewriter Every Morning. Clean Up Every Noon.

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.

The Boys With Their Feet On The Desks Know That The Easiest Murder Case In The World To Break Is The One Somebody Tried To Get Very Cute With; The One That Really Bothers Them Is The Murder Somebody Only Thought Of Two Minutes Before He Pulled It Off.

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

She Bent Over Me Again. Blood Began To Move Around In Me, Like A Prospective Tenant Looking Over A House.

As Honest As You Could Expect A Man To Be In A World Where It's Out Of Style.

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.

All Reading For Pleasure Is Entertainment.

She Was Kind Of Girl Who'd Eat All Your Cashews And Leave You With Nothing But Peanuts And Filberts.

Tall, Aren't You?" She Said. "i Didn't Mean To Be." Her Eyes Rounded. She Was Puzzled. She Was Thinking. I Could See, Even On That Short Acquaintance, That Thinking Was Always Going To Be A Bother To Her.

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.

It Is Not A Fragrant World.

A Check Girl In Peach-bloom Chinese Pajamas Came Over To Take My Hat And Disapprove Of My Clothes. She Had Eyes Like Strange Sins.

When The Plot Flags, Bring In A Man With A Gun.

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

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.

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.

Everything Written With Vitality Expresses That Vitality: There Are No Dull Subjects, Only Dull Minds.

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.

Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go Who Is Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid

Hollywood Is Wonderful. Anyone Who Doesn't Like It Is Either Crazy Or Sober.

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.

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.

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.

The Test Of A Writer Is Whether You Want To Read Him Again Years After He Should By The Rules Be Dated.

A Man Who Drinks Too Much On Occasion Is Still The Same Man As He Was Sober. An Alcoholic, A Real Alcoholic, Is Not The Same Man At All. You Can't Predict Anything About Him For Sure Except That He Will Be Someone You Never Met Before.

One Would Think A Writer Would Be Happy Here — If A Writer Is Ever Happy Anywhere.

Writers Who Get Written About Become Self-conscious. They Develop A Regrettable Habit Of Looking At Themselves Through The Eyes Of Other People. They Are No Longer Alone, They Have An Investment In Critical Praise, And They Think They Must Protect It. This Leads To A Diffusion Of Effort. The Writer Watches Himself As He Works. He Grows More Subtle And He Pays For It By Loss Of Organic Dash.

He Sounded Like A Man Who Had Slept Well And Didn't Owe Too Much Money.

If People Could Deal With Each Other Honestly, They Would Not Need Agents.

Could She *be* Anymore Out Of My League?

In Everything That Can Be Called Art There Is A Quality Of Redemption.

But Nothing Seems To Do Any Good.

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.

The Challenge Is To Write About Real Things Magically.

Tall, Aren't You? I Didn't Mean To Be.

A Real Gimlet Is Half Gin And Half Rose's Lime Juice And Nothing Else.

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

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.

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.

He Looked About As Inconspicuous As A Tarantula On A Slice Of Angel Food.

The Girl Gave Him A Look Which Ought To Have Stuck At Least Four Inches Out Of His Back.

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.

Throughout The History Of Commercial Life Nobody Has Ever Quite Liked The Commission Man. His Function Is Too Vague, His Presence Always Seems One Too Many, His Profit Looks Too Easy, And Even When You Admit That He Has A Necessary Function, You Feel That This Function Is, As It Were, A Personification Of Something That In An Ethical Society Would Not Need To Exist. If People Could Deal With One Another Honestly, They Would Not Need Agents.

Woe, Woe, Woe... In A Little While We Shall All Be Dead. Therefore Let Us Behave As Though We Were Dead Already.

Without Magic, There Is No Art. Without Art, There Is No Idealism. Without Idealism, There Is No Integrity. Without Integrity, There Is Nothing But Production.

Nice: Meaning I'm Going To Be Dating Leather-wearing Alcoholics And Complaining About Them - To You.

He Snorted And Hit Me In The Solar Plexus. I Bent Over And Took Hold Of The Room With Both Hands And Spun It. When I Had It Nicely Spinning I Gave It A Full Swing And Hit Myself On The Back Of The Head With The Floor.

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.

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.

Great Critics, Of Whom There Are Piteously Few, Build A Home For The Truth.

She Smelled The Way The Taj Mahal Looks By Moonlight.

California, The Department-store State. The Most Of Everything And The Best Of Nothing.

The Tragedy Of Life, Howard, Is Not That The Beautiful Die Young, But That They Grow Old And Mean. It Will Not Happen To Me.

The Most Durable Thing In Writing Is Style. It Is A Projection Of Personality And You Have To Have A Personality Before You Can Project It. It Is The Product Of Emotion And Perception.

It Seemed Like A Nice Neighborhood To Have Bad Habits In.

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.

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.

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.

She Was The Music Heard Faintly On The Edge Of Sound.

The Streets Were Dark With Something More Then Night.

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.

You Can Have A Hangover From Other Things Than Alcohol. I Had One From Women.

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.

If You're Not Tough It's Hard To Survive In This World; And If You're Not Kind Then You Don't Deserve To Survive.

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.

I Belonged In Idle Valley Like A Pearl Onion On A Banana Split.

A Good Title Is The Title Of A Successful Book.

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.

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.

The Actual Writing Is What You Live For. The Rest Is Something You Have To Get Through In Order To Arrive At The Point.

I Knew One Thing: As Soon As Anyone Said You Didn't Need A Gun, You'd Better Take One Along That Worked.

Some Are Able And Humane Men And Some Are Low-grade Individuals With The Morals Of A Goat, The Artistic Integrity Of A Slot Machine, And The Manners Of A Floorwalker With Delusions Of Grandeur.

Neither Of The Two People In The Room Paid Any Attention To The Way I Came In, Although Only One Of Them Was Dead.

I Guess God Made Boston On A Wet Sunday.

A Nice State Of Affairs When A Man Has To Indulge His Vices By Proxy.

The More You Reason The Less You Create.

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.

If You Believe In An Idea, You Don't Own You, It Owns You.

Undoubtedly The Stories About Them [hard-boiled Detectives] Had A Fantastic Element. Such Things Happened, But Not So Rapidly, Nor To So Close-knit A Group Of People, Nor Within So Narrow A Frame Of Logic. This Was Inevitable Because The Demand Was For Constant Action; If You Stopped To Think You Were Lost. When In Doubt, Have A Man Come Through A Door With A Gun In His Hand.

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.

A Good Story Cannot Be Devised; It Has To Be Distilled.

The Coffee Shop Smell Was Strong Enough To Build A Garage On.

A Dead Man Is The Best Fall Guy In The World. He Never Talks Back.

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.

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.

The Character That Lasts Is An Ordinary Guy With Some Extraordinary Qualities.

What Greater Prestige Can A Man Like Me (not Too Gifted, But Very Understanding) Have Than To Have Taken A Cheap, Shoddy And Utterly Lost Kind Of Writing, And Have Made Of It Something That Intellectuals Claw Each Other About?

Organized Crime Is The Dirty Side Of The Sharp Dollar.

La Doesn't Have The Heart Of A Paper Cup.

You Were Dead, You Were Sleeping The Big Sleep, You Were Not Bothered By Things Like That, Oil And Water Were The Same As Wind And Air To You. You Just Slept The Big Sleep, Not Caring About The Nastiness Of How You Died Or Where You Fell. Me, I Was Part Of The Nastiness Now. Far More A Part Of It Than Rusty Regan Was.

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.

I Do A Great Deal Of Research, Especially In The Apartments Of Tall Blondes.

I'm Killing Time And It's Dying Hard.

When I Split An Infinitive, God Damn It, I Split It So It Stays Split.

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.

I Was As Hollow And Empty As The Spaces Between Stars.

He (the Agent) Just Takes Ten Per Cent Of Your Life.

Under The Thinning Fog The Surf Curled And Creamed, Almost Without Sound, Like A Thought Trying To Form Inself On The Edge Of Consciousness.

There Is No Bad Whiskey. There Are Only Some Whiskeys That Aren't As Good As Others.

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.

This Generation

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.

Would You Convey My Compliments To The Purist Who Reads Your Proofs And Tell Him Or Her That I Write In A Sort Of Broken-down Patois Which Is Something Like The Way A Swiss Waiter Talks, And That When I Split An Infinitive, God Damn It, I Split It So It Will Stay Split, And When I Interrupt The Velvety Smoothness Of My More Or Less Literate Syntax With A Few Sudden Words Of Bar-room Vernacular, That Is Done With The Eyes Wide Open And The Mind Relaxed But Attentive.

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

She Jerked Away From Me Like A Startled Fawn Might, If I Had A Startled Fawn And It Jerked Away From Me.

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.

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.

An Age Which Is Incapable Of Poetry Is Incapable Of Any Kind Of Literature Except The Cleverness Of A Decadence.

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)

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.

Common Sense Is The Guy Who Tells You That You Ought To Have Had Your Brakes Relined Last Week Before You Smashed A Front End This Week. Common Sense Is The Monday Morning Quarterback Who Could Have Won The Ball Game If He Had Been On The Team. But He Never Is. He's High Up In The Stands With A Flask On His Hip. Common Sense Is The Little Man In A Grey Suit Who Never Makes A Mistake In Addition. But It's Always Someone Else's Money He's Adding Up.

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.

The Dilemma Of The Critic Has Always Been That If He Knows Enough To Speak With Authority, He Knows Too Much To Speak With Detachment.

Courage Is A Strange Thing: One Can Never Be Sure Of It

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.

The Best Way To Find Out If You Have Any Friends Is To Go Broke. The Ones That Hang On Longest Are Your Friends. I Don't Mean The Ones That Hang On Forever. There Aren't Any Of Those.

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.

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.

Some Days I Feel Like Playing It Smooth. Some Days I Feel Like Playing It Like A Waffle Iron.

Most People Go Through Life Using Up Half Their Energy Trying To Protect A Dignity They Never Had

Television Is Just One More Facet Of That Considerable Segment Of Our Society That Never Had Any Standard But The Soft Buck.

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.

The Average Detective Story Is Probably No Worse Than The Average Novel, But You Never See The Average Novel. It Doesn't Get Published. The Average -- Or Only Slightly Above Average -- Detective Story Does.... Whereas The Good Novel Is Not At All The Same Kind Of Book As The Bad Novel. It Is About Entirely Different Things. But The Good Detective Story And The Bad Detective Story Are About Exactly The Same Things, And They Are About Them In Very Much The Same Way.

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