On Writing – The More you Reason the Less you Create | Raymond Chandler, 1888-1959
John Engstead – Raymond Chandler holding his black cat, Taki,1954
“Style is the most valuable investment a writer
can make with his time.”
From a letter to George Harmon Coxe, 1939
“Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion.
Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.”
“Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality:
there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.”
“The emotional basis of the standard detective story was and had
always been that murder will out and justice will be done.”
“Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic.”
Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder, 1950
“Never take advice from anybody about writing.
Never show a work in progress to anybody.
Never answer a critic.”
From a letter to Dale Warren, 1948
“Write or nothing. That’s the rule. You don’t have to write, you don’t
have to do anything else. The check is there, you don’t have to
cash it, you don’t have to go to the bank.”
From a letter to Bernice Baumgarten, 1949
“The more you know about the tricks of fiction, the less you want to
write, until finally you know all the tricks and have nothing to say.”
From a letter to Hamish Hamilton, 1950
“The more you reason the less you create.”
The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, 1976
“The only salvation for a writer is to write.”
From a letter to James Sandoe, 1949
“If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to
Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.”
From a letter to Charles W. Morton, 1945
“People who write long books usually do so because
they don’t have the time to write short ones.”
“The best writing in English is done by people
who don’t care a damn about grammar.”
Raymond Chandler, Selected Letters, 1981
“When a writer starts talking about technique,
it’s a pretty good sign that he has run out of ideas.”
Raymond Chandler Speaking, 1962
also:
Book//mark – Playback | Raymond Chandler, 1958
On Writing | I’ve Been As Bad An Influence On American Literature | Dashiell Hammett, 1894-1961
