Ability is what you're capable of d... - Raymond Chandler - Quotes.Pub

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Attitude Quotes / Football Quotes Motivation Quotes

Raymond Chandler Quotes

All reading for pleasure is entertainment.

Reading Quotes

Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money.

You lied to him and you drank your cyanide like a little gentleman. You died like a poisoned rat, Harry, but you’re no rat to me.

If I had a razor, I’d cut your throat – just to see what ran out of it.

Rain filled the gutters and splashed knee-high off the sidewalk. Big cops in slickers that shone like gun barrels had a lot of fun carrying giggling girls across the bad places. The rain drummed hard on the roof of the car and the burbank top began to leak. A pool of water formed on the floorboards for me to keep my feet in. It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain.

The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: “Philip Marlowe... Investigations.” It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with same legend which is not locked. Come on in – there’s nobody here but me an a big bluebottle fly. But not if you’re from Manhattan, Kansas.

I’m a very smart guy. I haven’t a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals. I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you’ll think of me, I’ll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up.

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.

He had a heart as big as one of Mae West’s hips.

Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake.

I got back on the runway and took all of it and some of the hedge and gave the front door the heavy shoulder. This was foolish. About the only part of a California house you can’t put your foot through is the front door. All it did was hurt my shoulder and make me mad.

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.

Or can I call you Phil?” “Sure.” “You can can me Vivian.” “Thanks, Mrs. Regan.” “Oh, go to hell, Marlowe.

It’s like this with us baby. We’re coppers and everybody hates our guts... nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo.

I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.

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.

You’re a full portion of what I don’t like,’ she said. ‘Get out of my way.’ I didn’t move. She didn’t move. We were both sitting down – and not even close to each other.

Take it easy, Doc. Around here we only hit our wives in private.

It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.

Oh sure, I’m her husband. That’s what the record says. I’m the three white steps and the bug green front door and the brass knocker you rap one long and two short and the maid lets you into the hundred-dollar whorehouse.

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.

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.

The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.

I didn’t ask to see you. You sent for me. I don’t mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. 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.

They never tell you why they are doing anything. That way you don’t find out they don’t know themselves.

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