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ee252ee
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No border town is anything but a border town, just as no waterfront is anything but a waterfront.
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Raymond Chandler |
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8f4d7ad
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I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of black shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared at it. Marriott saw me staring at it. "An interesting bit," he said negligently. "I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial's Spirit of Dawn." "I thought it was Klopstein's Two Warts on a Fanny," I said. Mr. Lindsay Marriott's face looked as ..
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Raymond Chandler |
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b9f0ef9
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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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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45e34b1
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He was a windblown blossom of some two hundred pounds with freckled teeth and the mellow voice of a circus barker. He was tough, fast and he ate red meat. Nobody could push him around. He was the kind of cop who spits on his blackjack every night instead of saying his prayers. But he had humorous eyes.
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Raymond Chandler |
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20539d2
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She wore a steel gray business suit and under the jacket a dark blue shirt and a man's tie of lighter shade. The edges of the folded handkerchief in the breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread.
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Raymond Chandler |
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53d0fc9
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the colour of her hair was dusky red, like a fire under control but still dangerous.
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Raymond Chandler |
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1b611ae
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I bet she snaps a mean garter.
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Raymond Chandler |
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a1a9e47
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Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk cars, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked almost alone now. The noises died behind me, the hot dishonest light became a fumbling glare. Then the lightless ..
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Raymond Chandler |
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290acf4
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The kid said: "I don't like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don't like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don't like them in the first place."
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Raymond Chandler |
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f07b9e9
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A white night for me is as rare as a fat postman. If it hadn't been for Mr. Howard Spencer at the Ritz-Beverly I would have killed a bottle and knocked myself out. And the next time I saw a polite character drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, I would depart rapidly in several directions. There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3ebec55
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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.
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society-thinking
cynicism
crime
police
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Raymond Chandler |
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73cd262
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You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.
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Raymond Chandler |
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bf30b64
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A man like you who is supposed to know his way around. The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
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Raymond Chandler |
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3440e18
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There are days like that. Everybody you meet is a dope. You begin to look at yourself in the glass and wonder.
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Raymond Chandler |
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8545147
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The car slid along Los Angeles to Fifth, east to San Pedro, south again for block after block, quiet blocks and loud blocks, blocks where silent men sat on shaky front porches and blocks where noisy young toughs of both colors snarled and wise-cracked at one another in front of cheap restaurants and drug-stores and beer parlors full of slot machines. (Pickup on Noon Street)
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Raymond Chandler |
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b3ef0a6
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A hard-boiled redhead sang a hard-boiled song in a voice that could have been used to split firewood (Guns at Cyrano's)
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Raymond Chandler |
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7f06f22
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I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between the stars.
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Raymond Chandler |
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cf29e66
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You like it in jail?' 'It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?
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Raymond Chandler |
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b25098c
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You're not human tonight, Marlowe.
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Raymond Chandler |
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7f506d9
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All right, you. Stand straight. Pull your belly in. Pull your chin in. Keep your shoulders back. Hold your head level. Look straight front. Turn left. Turn right. Face front again and hold your hands out. Palms up. Palms down. Pull your sleeves back. No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective. Well, well, nice to see you..
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Raymond Chandler |
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bd2168f
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To say goodbye is to die a little
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Raymond Chandler |
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d53695d
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From "Raymond Chandler Speaking"
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Raymond Chandler |
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f6c7864
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Whoever had done it had meant business. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
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Raymond Chandler |
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6b9bba3
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You mean something happened to him?" Her voice faded off into sort of a sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment."
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Raymond Chandler |
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1f6b9a2
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Just keep your nose clean and everything will be jake.
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old-timey
phrases
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Raymond Chandler |
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5277083
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A man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets.
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parenting
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Raymond Chandler |
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258cb50
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I went down to the lobby and slipped the catch and then took a shower and put my pajamas on and lay down on the bed. I could have slept for a week. I dragged myself up off the bed again and set the catch on the door, which I had forgotten to do, and walked through a deep hard snowdrift out to the kitchenette and laid out glasses and a bottle of liqueur Scotch I had been saving for a really high-class seduction.
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Raymond Chandler |
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d0b3ab1
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A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.
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Raymond Chandler |
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24e68c1
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I'm part Chinese, part Hawaiian, part Filipino, and part nigger. You'd hate to be me
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Raymond Chandler |
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407e046
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I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination,
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Raymond Chandler |
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bce7901
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Lace and ruffles, swords and coaches, elegance and leisure, duels and gallant death. All lies. They used perfume instead of soap, their teeth rotted because they never cleaned them, their fingernails smelled of stale gravy. The nobility of France urinated against the walls in the marble corridors of Versailles, and when you finally got several sets of underclothes off the lovely marquise the first thing you noticed was that she needed a bat..
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Raymond Chandler |
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57d2cd4
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I like games of chance, including women.
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women
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Raymond Chandler |
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304eac7
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I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling.
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Raymond Chandler |
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c27460e
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It's so hard for women - even nice women - to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.
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Raymond Chandler |
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f6672f8
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Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. It
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Raymond Chandler |
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73ba4de
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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.
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Raymond Chandler |
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cebe995
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His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.
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noir
movies
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Raymond Chandler |
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228cb22
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Writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction.
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Raymond Chandler |
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2e5bc09
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Hammett wrote at first (and almost to the end) for people with a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there. Violence did not dismay them; it was right down their street. 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. He put these people ..
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hammett
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Raymond Chandler |
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544b18a
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The music gushed from the loudspeaker in a swirl of shadowed melody. Since Vienna died, all waltzes are shadowed. (I'll be waiting)
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Raymond Chandler |
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d51e81d
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You were lucky about that gun. All the people we know have been playing with it, wiping prints off and putting them on. I even put a set on myself just to be fashionable.
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Raymond Chandler |
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b2bd44f
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I dreamed I was far down in the depths of icy green water with a corpse under my arm. The corpse had long blond hair that kept floating around in front of my face. An enormous fish with bulging eyes and a bloated body and scales shining with putrescence swam around leering like an elderly roue. Just as I was about to burst from lack of air, the corpse came alive under my arm and got away from me and then I was fighting with the fish and the..
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Raymond Chandler |
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de08afd
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in a voice with half the steps missing.
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Raymond Chandler |
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5647fe1
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His blue eyes frosted. 'Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?' 'No. But I'm having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are.
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snark
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Raymond Chandler |