The Raymond Chandler Papers Quotes

“A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909-1959

“That's the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't be sure. But when he can no longer throw the high hard one, he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He doesn't just walk off the mound and weep.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909-1959

“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 paper.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909-1959