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98d5f9e
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She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon's tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella.
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Raymond Chandler |
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e00d0e7
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He opened the rear door and I got in and sank down into the cushions and George slid under the wheel and started the big car. It moved away from the curb and around the corner with as much noise as a bill makes in a wallet.
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Raymond Chandler |
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a350733
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She put a hard-boiled sneer on her face and gave me plenty of time to get used to it
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Raymond Chandler |
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3d824f5
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Then there were no more houses, just the burnt foothills and the cement ribbon and a sheer drop on the left into the coolness of a nameless canyon, and on the right heat bouncing off the seared clay bank at whose edge a few unbeatable wild flowers clawed and hung on like naughty children who won't go to bed.
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Raymond Chandler |
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e96ecca
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Anybody ever tell you you're a cute little trick?
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Raymond Chandler |
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860af84
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Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood.
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Raymond Chandler |
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c08a138
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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 ..
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Raymond Chandler |
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130dfa3
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I believe...that to be very poor and very beautiful is most probably a moral failure more than an artistic success. Shakespeare would have done well in any generation because he would have refused to die in a corner; he would have taken the false gods and made them over; he would have taken the current formulae and forced them into something lesser men thought them incapable of. Alive today he would undoubtedly have written and directed mot..
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beautiful-losers
bravery
courage
courage-to-be-oneself
fresh-ideas
great-art
greatness
hip-hop
innovation
integrity
lars-von-trier
modern-art
porn-as-art
pornography
refinement
sasha-grey
sex-in-cinema
shakespeare
struggling-artist
struggling-writer
the-truth
vulgarity
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Raymond Chandler |
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763b162
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They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o'-shanter which wasn't any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the ..
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Raymond Chandler |
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b991337
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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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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482553c
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I'm a copper," he said. "Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style."
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Raymond Chandler |
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d6c2743
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She approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a businessmen's lunch and tilted her head to finger a stray, but not very stray, tendril of softly glowing hair. Her smile was tentative, but could be persuaded to be nice.
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Raymond Chandler |
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13db640
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French said: "It's like this with us, baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts. And as if we didn't have enough trouble, we have to have you. As if we didn't get pushed around enough by the guys in the corner offices, the City Hall gang, the day chief, the night chief, the Chamber of Commerce, His Honor the Mayor in his paneled office four times as big as the three lousy rooms the whole homicide staff has to work out of. As if we di..
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Raymond Chandler |
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a6747af
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As for asking favors or handouts, no.' But you'll take them from a stranger.' He looked me straight in the eye. 'The stranger can keep going and pretend not to hear.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3517d4d
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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..
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Raymond Chandler |
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14ee856
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Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride's pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.
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Raymond Chandler |
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d77eca1
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The homicide skipper that year was a Captain Gregorius, a type of copper that is getting rarer but by no means extinct, the kind that solves crimes with the bright light, the soft sap, the kick to the kidneys, the knee to the groin, the fist to the solar plexus, the night stick to the base of the spine. Six months later he was indicted for perjury before a grand jury, booted without trial, and later stamped to death by a big stallion on his..
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Raymond Chandler |
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09b7655
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I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.
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Raymond Chandler |
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f47343f
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A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.
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Raymond Chandler |
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b6e74f9
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However hard I try to be nice I always end up with my nose in the dirt and my thumb feeling for somebody's eye.
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Raymond Chandler |
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2bf9f30
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The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume.
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Raymond Chandler |
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a4a0637
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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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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4478e00
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My God, you big dark handsome brute! I ought to throw a Buick at you.
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Raymond Chandler |
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7c2704f
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I'm rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?
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Raymond Chandler |
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9bab4ca
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I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read them often, only when I run out of things to dislike......I threw the paper into the corner and turned on the TV set. After the society page dog vomit even the wrestlers looked good.
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Raymond Chandler |
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f87b612
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Maybe we all get like this in the cold half-lit world where always the wrong thing happens and never the right.
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Raymond Chandler |
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ac13a67
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A doorman opened the door for me and I went in. The lobby was not quite as big as the Yankee Stadium. It was floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge rubber underneath. It was so soft it made me want to lie down and roll.
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Raymond Chandler |
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5a4cd7b
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So is he gonna wake up from that nap yet or what?
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Raymond Chandler |
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cec192b
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He looked around and yawned. "I haven't been sleeping well. It's nice in here. But after a while the lushes will fill the place up and talk loud and laugh and the goddam women will start waving their hands and screwing up their faces and tinkling their goddam bracelets and making up with the packaged charm which will later on in the evening have a slight but unmistakable odour of sweat." "Take it easy," I said. "So they're human, they swea..
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women
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Raymond Chandler |
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f0c660e
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There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish.
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Raymond Chandler |
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e13342a
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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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3e14ea6
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I was in the deep water. It was dark and unclear and the taste of the salt was in my mouth.
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Raymond Chandler |
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15e1e7b
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I was a swell guy. I enjoyed being me.
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Raymond Chandler |
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82d5fb8
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We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expe..
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Raymond Chandler |
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65bcdcc
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Got any good ideas, soldier?" "Lots of them. Somebody gunned Geiger. Somebody got gunned by Geiger, who ran away. Or it was two other fellows. Or Geiger was running a cult and made blood sacrifices in front of that totem pole. Or he had chicken for dinner and liked to kill his chickens in the front parlor."
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Raymond Chandler |
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3da896f
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I went out to the kitchen to make coffee--yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The lifeblood of tired men. It
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Raymond Chandler |
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2dac076
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I'm not sneering at sex. It's necessary and it doesn't have to be ugly. But it always has to be managed. Making it glamorous is a billion-dollar industry and it costs every cent of it.
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Raymond Chandler |
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08427f8
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Preoccupation with style will not produce it. No amount of editing and polishing will have any appreciable effect on the flavor of how a man writes. It is a product of the quality of his emotion and perception; it is the ability to transfer these to paper which makes him a writer, in contrast to the great number of people who have just as good emotions and just as keen perceptions, but cannot come within a googol of miles of putting them on..
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Raymond Chandler |
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90e0d1f
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Newspapers are owned and published by rich men. Rich men all belong to the same club. Sure, there's competition--hard tough competition for circulation, for newsbeats, for exclusive stories. Just so long as it doesn't damage the prestige and privilege and position of the owners. If it does, down comes the lid.
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Raymond Chandler |
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c9f64e7
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It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it.
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Raymond Chandler |
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909c96b
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It got dark and the rain-clouded lights of the stores were soaked up by the black street.
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Raymond Chandler |
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72d67b3
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Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know." -- Raymond Chandler"
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Raymond Chandler |
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c9f721b
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Kind of smart guesser, ain't you, young man? Can't wait for folks to get their mouth open hardly." "I'm sorry, Mrs. Morrison. This is an important matter to us--" "This here young man don't seem to have no trouble keepin' his mouth in place." "He's married," I said. "He's had practice." --
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Raymond Chandler |
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24ffc16
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She's a nice girl. Not my type." "You don't like them nice?" He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand. "I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin." "They take you to the cleaners," Randall said indifferently."
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Raymond Chandler |