Bryan Hall > Bryan's Quotes

“The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“Do you want to know how to write novels? I’ll tell you the secret: start on page one and keep going, in order, until you come to the last page. Then stop.”
― Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

“Besides, I don’t understand people who read a book for pleasure and then ruminate on the book’s ideas. Paper was invented so we wouldn’t have to keep all those thoughts in our heads.”
― Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

“Thinking might be fun at first, but then you got hooked on it. People were even encouraged to do it in school, and in many popular pastimes. In the end, though, it made you miserable.”
― Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

“You don't read books." She'd meant it as an accusation, as the worst sort of insult. She said it maliciously.”
― Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

“Why doesn’t their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Christian but I’m not. I’m something else and I don’t know what.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“You are fascinated with yourself. You will say anything that occurs to you, but what I can’t understand are the things that do occur to you. I should like to take your head apart, put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“Hungry people should be fed. It takes some people a long time to figure this out.”
― Lemony Snicket, Shouldn't You Be in School?

“You may be right,' she said, a phrase which here meant 'I’m wrong, but I don’t have the courage to say so.”
― Lemony Snicket, Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that's wonderful.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that’s wonderful.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye