Raymond Chandler (1888 – 1959)
Author of crime stories and novels.
We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.
The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.
I hung up.
It was a step in the right direction, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hid under the desk.
Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it [the detective story] is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.
The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.
'Okay, thees Hench no good, but poor guy, drunk, no job. Pay no rent, but I got lotsa money. So I say, Look, Hench, you make the confess. You sick man. Two three weeks sick. You go into court. I have a lawyer for you. You say to hell with the confess. I was drunk. The damn coppers are stuck. The judge he turn you loose and you come back to me and I take care of you. Okay? So Hench say okay, make the confess. That's all.'
I said: 'And after two or three weeks the bad brother is a long way from here and the trail is cold and the cops will likely just write the Phillips killing off as unsolved. Is that it?'
'Si.' He smiled again. A brilliant warm smile, like the kiss of death.
Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
"You know what Canino will do---beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."
'He used to wear a little blond moustache but Mother made him cut it off. She said -'
'Don't tell me. The minister needed it to stuff a cushion.'
The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.
Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.
A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.
You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
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.
He didn't curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in.
"I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."
She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
...crazy as two waltzing mice.
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 little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.