559 Quotes by Raymond Chandler

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.

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.

I like games of chance, including women.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean.

I went to the door and looked out. The cool night breeze was blowing peacefully down the hall. No excited neighbors hung out of doorways. A small gun had gone off and broken a pane of glass, but noises like that don't mean much any more.

I didn't mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a family. Not much: a few books, pictures, radio, chessmen, old letters, stuff like that. Nothing. Such as they were, they had all my memories.

You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime. (I'll Be Waiting)

So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer.""Me? How?""The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read.""Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them."She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at.""That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops.""Oh, nuts.