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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 08427f8 | 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.. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 90e0d1f | 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. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| c9f64e7 | 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. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 909c96b | It got dark and the rain-clouded lights of the stores were soaked up by the black street. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 72d67b3 | 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" | Raymond Chandler | ||
| c9f721b | 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." -- | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 24ffc16 | 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." | Raymond Chandler | ||
| d1d98fe | you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 3c2c20e | The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn't have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore. They're topped by too many smart minds. | detective-fiction raymond-chandler | Raymond Chandler | |
| 3986c0c | Guns never settle anything, I said. They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 0a19011 | Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you 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 g.. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 2002962 | The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night-to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house. | humor noir-fiction | Raymond Chandler | |
| f5604fc | I suppose you do this to all the clients," she said softly." | Raymond Chandler | ||
| faf9610 | I went back to the office and sat in my swivel chair and tried to catch up on my foot-dangling. There was a gusty wind blowing in at the windows and the soot from the oil burners of the hotel next door was drown-draughted into the room and rolling across the top of the desk like tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot. I was thinking about going out to lunch and that life was pretty flat and that it would probably be just as flat if I took .. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 932c489 | gr yh mrd slm d` khnd, nshnhy ymn st. wly wqty ykh mrd mryD d` khnd fqT trsydh. | دعا | Raymond Chandler | |
| 5d16a1f | I hung up and fed myself a slug of Old Forester to brace my nerves for the interview. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 67f988b | All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 3c3efc4 | Manhattan is a small town. It has to be. Only half a dozen places in Kansas are anything else. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 91fe188 | California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 20b569c | You probably didn't intend it, but you've done me a favor. With an assist from Detective Dayton. You've solved a problem for me. No man likes to betray a friend but I wouldn't betray an enemy into your hands. You're not only a gorilla, you're an incompetent. You don't know how to operate a simple investigation. I was balanced on a knife-edge and you could have swung me either way. But you had to abuse me, throw coffee in my face, and use yo.. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 7e06918 | The tragedy of life, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 055dd05 | We were very much in love--the wild, mysterious, improbable kind of love that never comes but once. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 3665b34 | There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 5508e8d | I'm a weak character, without guts or ambition. I caught the brass ring and it shocked me to find out it wasn't gold. A guy like me has one big moment in his life, one perfect swing on the high trapeze. Then he spends the rest of his time trying not to fall off the sidewalk into the gutter. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| f8e0977 | Authenticity is boring, credibility is important | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 3a141c2 | Ohls showed the motor-cycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night's hard rain hadn't even dented. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 9c4604a | seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 05098ae | California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 271b6a4 | She was a cute as a washtub. | film-noir mystery | Raymond Chandler | |
| ec7a09f | Pensa all'asimmetria. Questo e un mondo, pensa, in cui puoi startene a letto a sentire una canzone mentre sogni la persona che ami, e i tuoi sentimenti e la canzone si fanno eco a vicenda in modo cosi potente e completo che sembra impossibile che l'amata, chiunque e ovunque sia, non se ne accorga, non riceva il segnale che pulsa dal tuo cuore, come se tu e la musica e l'amore e tutto l'universo siate fusi in un'unica forza che puo essere in.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 37f8daa | Their faith in him is at once touching and alarming -- their trust that they are safe simply because he's with them, as if an adult presence warded of all possible threat, emanated an unbreachable forcefield. | children danger safety | Paul Murray | |
| bb3faec | Modern life is a centrifuge; it throws people in every direction. | migration modern-life modernity rootlessness | Paul Murray | |
| b3fe9df | Irish-looking,' Halley said, by which she meant a collection of indistinct features - pale skin, mousy hair, general air of ill-health - that combine to mysteriously powerful romantic effect. | irish | Paul Murray | |
| ddd5628 | It's like when you find out your lover has been unfaithful: in one horrible instant everything she was to you, the whole beautiful enchantment, falls away, and you see her as she really is - mortal, machinating, tethered like everyone else to a little patch of space and time. And the worst of it is that you knew all along. | human-condition infidelity love | Paul Murray | |
| 6cf2c0b | You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score.. | inspirational makes-you-think tragic-comedy | Paul Murray | |
| f96ea15 | This 'web of discourses' as Robyn called it...is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world. (Clothes too, are part of the extended phenotype of Homo Sapiens almost every niche inhabited by that species.An illustrated encyclopedia of zoology should no more picture Homo Sapiens naked than it should picture Ursus arctus-the black bear- wearing a clown suit and riding a bicycle. | dennett humor philosophy philosophy-of-mind science | Daniel C. Dennett | |
| fa44d6c | It is not "scientism" to concede the objectivity and precision of good science, any more than it is history worship to concede that Napoleon did once rule in' France and the Holocaust actually happened. Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders." | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| c55cfeb | to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. You should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as.. | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| 4f716e4 | You can't change your beliefs as an act of will, in the way you can decide to improve your skills with chainsaw or keyboard. | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| c02eeb6 | The more you have invested in your religion, the more you will be motivated to protect that investment. Stark | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| 1886e8f | Carpenters don't make their saws and hammers, tailors don't make their scissors and needles, and plumbers don't make their wrenches, but blacksmiths can make their hammers, tongs, anvils, and chisels | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| cfe4007 | It's not an intellectual exercise. It's not an academic pursuit--it sort of masquerades as one, but at its core it's a test of trust in each other. Are you or aren't you one of us? And woe to the one who doesn't toe the line. | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| c7d0ef5 | That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate. | knowledge reason | Daniel C. Dennett | |
| c1ecf43 | Does that mean that religious texts are worthless as guides to ethics? Of course not. They are magnificent sources of insight into human nature, and into the possibilities of ethical codes. Just as we should not be surprised to discover that ancient folk medicine has a great deal to teach modern hightech medicine, we should not be surprised if we find that these great religious texts hold versions of the very best ethical systems any human .. | Daniel C. Dennett |