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a7097b8
|
I hung up. It was a good start, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hidden under the desk.
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Raymond Chandler |
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87271a9
|
He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.
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Raymond Chandler |
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8bc30f3
|
When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, ..
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southern-california
disillusionment
los-angeles
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Raymond Chandler |
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aa48a5a
|
The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs the..
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Raymond Chandler |
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acbdc0e
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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.
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quixotic
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Raymond Chandler |
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2879115
|
If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.
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Raymond Chandler |
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7231eb4
|
The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
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Raymond Chandler |
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c97e30a
|
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.
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terry-lennox
rich-people
raymond-chandler
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Raymond Chandler |
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156e535
|
She had eyes like strange sins.
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Raymond Chandler |
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39a91ed
|
Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.
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Raymond Chandler |
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33b924d
|
I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
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Raymond Chandler |
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36b68c6
|
It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.
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velma
farewell
noir
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Raymond Chandler |
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6c47059
|
The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.
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mystery-suspense
noir
|
Raymond Chandler |
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97f3a4e
|
I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.
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Raymond Chandler |
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f786b12
|
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied ..
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humor
efficiency
rescue
propriety
knights
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Raymond Chandler |
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31e0af7
|
I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
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Raymond Chandler |
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52c6c98
|
Shake your business up and pour it. I don't have all day.
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Raymond Chandler |
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f455d4a
|
Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.
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Raymond Chandler |
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ff94875
|
She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.
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Raymond Chandler |
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89c79bc
|
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 add..
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Raymond Chandler |
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cfcbfaf
|
There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3704e35
|
I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3721935
|
She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.
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noir-style
metaphors
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Raymond Chandler |
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ed9765f
|
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..
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Raymond Chandler |
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2d530e2
|
The challenge is to write about real things magically.
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Raymond Chandler |
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d7e7edb
|
After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. 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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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f7a1744
|
I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
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women
trouble
staring
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Raymond Chandler |
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8ffec29
|
You go in through double swing doors. Inside the double doors there is a combination PBX and information desk at which sits one of those ageless women you see around municipal offices everywhere in the world. They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don't have to please anybody. They are safe. They are civil without ever quite being polite and intelligent and knowledgeable without any real i..
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Raymond Chandler |
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18d159d
|
Time passed again. I don't know how long. I had no watch. They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway.
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Raymond Chandler |
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0d87abb
|
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
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Raymond Chandler |
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70eade6
|
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..
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trust
truth
interrogation
police
|
Raymond Chandler |
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381baf4
|
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.
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|
women
dicks
noir-style
|
Raymond Chandler |
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438978f
|
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.
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|
Raymond Chandler |
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771eaf7
|
One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is ever happy anywhere.
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Raymond Chandler |
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8e1a42a
|
Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober.
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drunkenness
drunk
|
Raymond Chandler |
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20f1867
|
Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You're the second guy I've met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.
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Raymond Chandler |
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ea248eb
|
Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamour queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver's shirts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunch-box. Out of a Texas car hop with the literacy of a character in a comic strip it will make an international courtesan, married six times to si..
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Raymond Chandler |
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59ced71
|
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.
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metaphor
simile
humour
|
Raymond Chandler |
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7f870e5
|
Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, gre..
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money
injustice
corruption
justice
prison
crime
|
Raymond Chandler |
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7f3fa86
|
Tall, aren't you? I didn't mean to be.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
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a1d52ee
|
She was thinking. i could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother for her.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
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cceaa0f
|
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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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c0bce65
|
It's so hard for women--even nice women--to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.
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|
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
8dbd0ee
|
Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood"
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Raymond Chandler |