"'There will never be slaves in Britain,' Godalming continued, 'but those who stay warm will naturally serve us, as the excellent Bessie has just served me. Have a care, lest you wind up the equivalent of some damned regimental water-bearer.'

'In India, I knew a water-bearer who was a better man than most.'"
— Kim Newman (Anno Dracula)

"I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."
— J.G. Ballard

"Sooner or later, everything turns into television."
— J.G. Ballard (The Day of Creation: A Novel)

"Language is a virus from outer space"
— William S. Burroughs

"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on."
— William S. Burroughs

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."
— William S. Burroughs

"Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will."
— William S. Burroughs

"Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. "
— William S. Burroughs

"Like Spain, I am bound to the past."
— William S. Burroughs

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away. "
— Raymond Chandler

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."
— Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep)

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."
— Raymond Chandler (Long Goodbye)

"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."
— Raymond Chandler

"He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway."
— Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye)

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
— William Shakespeare

"We know what we are, but not what we may be."
— William Shakespeare

"I despised my arrival on this earth and I despise my departure; it is a tragedy."
— William Shakespeare

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. "
— Philip K. Dick

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."
— Philip K. Dick

"Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production. "
— Raymond Chandler

"'there is no bad whiskey, there are only some whiskies that aren't as good as others'"
— Raymond Chandler

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
— Raymond Chandler

"To say goodbye is to die a little."
— Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye)

"He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake."
— Raymond Chandler

"The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back."
— Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye)

"As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style."
— Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep)

""You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was."
"
— Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep)

""I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it." "
— Raymond Chandler

"A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong."
— Raymond Chandler (Pearls Are a Nuisance)

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."
— Raymond Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely)

"The streets were dark with something more then night."
— Raymond Chandler

"A good title is the title of a successful book."
— Raymond Chandler

"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency."
— Raymond Chandler

"A really good detective never gets married."
— Raymond Chandler

"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."
— Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep)

"A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
"
— Raymond Chandler

"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."
— Raymond Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)

"I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.
"
— Raymond Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)

"California, the department store state."
— Raymond Chandler

"A city with all the personality of a paper cup. (On Los Angeles)"
— Raymond Chandler

" 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.
Farewell, My Lovely "
— Raymond Chandler

"The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time."
— Raymond Chandler

"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."
— Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep)

"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 adding up."
— Raymond Chandler (Playback)

"I said: "Dead end - quiet, restful, like your town. I like a town like this." Marlowe (talking about Olympia) in a short story called Goldfish."
— Raymond Chandler (The Complete Stories)

"Velma you says? No Velma heah, brother. No hooch, no gals, no nothing. Jes' the scram, white boy, jes' the scram."
— Raymond Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely)

"I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful."
— Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye)

"All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity."
— Raymond Chandler