American - Writer | July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
Raymond Chandler
AgePoetryLiteratureKindExcept
I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.
GodSundayBostonWetMadeGuess
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.
GoodWritingPerceptionBadCritic
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.
PowerIdeasWritingThinkThinking
Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck.
SocietyTelevisionMoreNeverSoft
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
IntelligenceAdvertisingYouFind
It is not a fragrant world.
WorldSocietyFragrant
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
ManDoorGunDoubtHandThrough
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.
ArtEndDesireSayNothingNeed
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
MeSheAwayMightLikeHad
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.
GunBetterYouSaidNeedTake
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.
ManCreativeEgoPictureYouArtist
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