Raymond Chandler Playback Quotes

If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee.

The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket

Guns never settle anything, I said. They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act

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.

I was doing a cheap sneaky job for people I didn't like, but that's what you hire out for, chum. They pay the bills, you dig the dirt.

She put a hard-boiled sneer on her face and gave me plenty of time to get used to it

I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors

There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.

If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.

The next hour was three hours long

The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn't hear too well what it said, partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down

I don't greatly care for passes this early in the morning.

A three-piece Mexican band was making the kind of music a Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They always sing the same song, and it always has nice open vowels an a drawn-out, sugary lilt, and the guy who sings it always strums on a guitar and has a lot to say about amor, mi corazon, a lady who is "linda" but very hard to convince, and he always has too long and too oily hair and when he isn't making with the love stuff he looks as if his knife work in an alley would be efficient and economical.

He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket.

What rattled and thumped was a knotted towel full of melting ice cubes. Somebody who loved me very much had put them on the back of my head. Somebody who loved me less had bashed in the back of my skull. It could have been the same person. People have moods.

Lucille has a dull life, Mr. Marlowe. She's stuck here with me and a PBX. And an itty-bitty diamond ring - so small I was ashamed to give it to her. But what can a man do? If he loves a girl, he'd like it to show on her finger." Lucille held her left hand up and moved it around to get a flash from the little stone. "I hate it," she said. "I hate it like I hate the sunshine and the summer and the bright stars and the full moon. That's how I hate it". I picked up the key and my suitcase and left them. A little more of that and I'd be falling in love with myself. I might even give myself a small unpretentious diamond ring.

I'm part Chinese, part Hawaiian, part Filipino, and part nigger. You'd hate to be me

Javonen smiled - very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile.

Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.

Uh-huh. Could be,' I said. It was a spot for a paragraph of lucid prose. Henry Clarendon IV would have obliged. I didn't have a damn thing more to say.

Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you 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 gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up

I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one

If God were omnipresent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium.

She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word. I helped her off with her raincoat. She smelled very nice. She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at. She wore night sheer stockings. I stared at them rather intently, especially when she crossed her legs and held out a cigarette to be lighted

How can such a hard man be so gentle? she asked wonderingly. If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.” I

On a dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.

Don't kid yourself. You're a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.

She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word.

La primera sensación fue que, si alguien me reñía, yo me echaría a llorar. La segunda, que la habitación era demasiado pequeña para mi cabeza. Sentía la frente muy lejos de la nuca, y los lados enormemente distantes el uno del otro, a pesar de lo cual un sordo latido pasaba de una sien a otra. Las distancias no significan nada hoy en día.

When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect.

He looked durable. Most fat men do.

There are things that are facts, in a statistical sense, on paper, on a tape recorder, in evidence. And there are things that are facts because they have to be facts, because nothing makes any sense otherwise.

There was a woman. She was rich. She thought she wanted to marry me. It wouldn’t have worked. I’ll probably never see her again. But I remember.” “Let’s go,” she said quietly. “And let’s leave the memory in charge. I only wish I had one worth remembering.” On the way down to the Cadillac I didn’t touch her either. She drove beautifully. When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect.

frowst.

Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They always sing the same song, and it always has nice open vowels and a drawn out sugary lilt, and the guy who sings it always strums on a guitar and has a lot to say about amor, mi corazón, a lady who is “linda” but very hard to convince, and he always has too long and too oily hair

On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.

At twenty-nine a dish like this would almost certainly have been married.

omnipotent? How could he be? There’s so much suffering and almost always by the innocent. Why will a mother rabbit trapped in a burrow by a ferret put her babies behind her and allow her throat to be torn out? Why? In two weeks more she would not even recognize them. Do you believe in God, young man?

Guns never settle anything,” I said. “They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act.

Of course I have no right to assume that I shall go to heaven. Sounds rather dull, as a matter of fact.

He was talking too much. People with unstable nerves are like that. One moment monosyllables, next moment a flood.