Playback Quotes

“If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive.
If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“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

“A three-piece Mexican band was making the kind of music a Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They always sing the same song, and it always has nice open vowels an a drawn-out, sugary lilt, and the guy who sings it always strums on a guitar and has a lot to say about amor, mi corazon, a lady who is "linda" but very hard to convince, and he always has too long and too oily hair and when he isn't making with the love stuff he looks as if his knife work in an alley would be efficient and economical.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Guns never settle anything, I said. They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Lucille has a dull life, Mr. Marlowe. She's stuck here with me and a PBX. And an itty-bitty diamond ring - so small I was ashamed to give it to her. But what can a man do? If he loves a girl, he'd like it to show on her finger."

Lucille held her left hand up and moved it around to get a flash from the little stone. "I hate it," she said. "I hate it like I hate the sunshine and the summer and the bright stars and the full moon. That's how I hate it".

I picked up the key and my suitcase and left them. A little more of that and I'd be falling in love with myself. I might even give myself a small unpretentious diamond ring.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I was doing a cheap sneaky job for people I didn't like, but that's what you hire out for, chum. They pay the bills, you dig the dirt.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“She put a hard-boiled sneer on her face and gave me plenty of time to get used to it”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“The next hour was three hours long”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn't hear too well what it said, partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“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 gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“What rattled and thumped was a knotted towel full of melting ice cubes. Somebody who loved me very much had put them on the back of my head. Somebody who loved me less had bashed in the back of my skull. It could have been the same person. People have moods.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word. I helped her off with her raincoat. She smelled very nice. She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at. She wore night sheer stockings. I stared at them rather intently, especially when she crossed her legs and held out a cigarette to be lighted”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Javonen smiled - very slightly. Call it a down payment on a smile.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“If God were omnipresent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I'm part Chinese, part Hawaiian, part Filipino, and part nigger. You'd hate to be me”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Uh-huh. Could be,' I said. It was a spot for a paragraph of lucid prose. Henry Clarendon IV would have obliged. I didn't have a damn thing more to say.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“On a dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“How can such a hard man be so gentle? she asked wonderingly.
If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“Don't kid yourself. You're a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.” I”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“frowst.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback