The First One

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George Platt Lynes 

Chandler at La Jolla,

San Diego, Calif

Never Be Old

       They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don't have to please anybody. They are safe.

Raymond Chandler
The Little Sister
1949

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Arthur Tanner

On a Barstool

Dusky and Quiet

         The bar entrance was to the left. It was dusky and quiet and a bartender moved mothlike against the faint glitter of piled glassware. A tall handsome blonde in a dress that looked like seawater sifted over with gold dust came out of the ladies room .......

Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye
1953

           https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/raymond-chandler-gritty-enchanter/

Lonely Rooms

      I see (Marlowe) always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated.

Raymond Chandler
Letter to Maurice Guinness
Feb 21st 1959

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unknown
                                    http://www.thrillingdetective.com/marlowe.html

Somebody To Call Up

        Let the telephone ring, please. Let there be somebody to call up and plug me into the human race......... Nobody has to like me.

Raymond Chandler
The Little Sister
1949

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Murder My Sweet
1944
                            https://newrepublic.com/article/122354/murder-honor

As It Fell

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George Platt Lynes

Chandler 1947

Just Kill Time

                                     "Mostly i just kill time" he said. "And it dies hard"

Raymond Chandler
Long Goodbye
1953

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Jack Vettriano
Same Old Game

By the Desire

        The United States is still a place without law. Not all cities have a corrupt police system, but in the majority the police are as corrupt as hell because they are dominated by politicians and these by the desire to get rich.

Raymond Chandler

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Diego Molina
                             http://www.jornada.com.mx/2006/10/01/sem-adrian.html

Last Four Years

       The bathroom where Chandler, two months after Cissy's death, tried to shoot himself, is still in use, and the bullet holes in the ceiling are no longer visible.

       A month after that incident Chandler sold the house. He moved often in his last four years. Roaming from New York to London and back to La Jolla, with frequent stops in hospitals to "dry out". On March 1959 he died in Scripps Clinic. A few days later he was buried at San Diego's Mount Hope cemetery.

from
Rubbing Out Chandler's Place
Peter Rowe
San Diego Union Tribune
2004

                  https://www.shamustown.com/images/RubbingoutChandler'splace.pdf

Tired and Scared

               The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can't afford ideals.

Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye
1953

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George Platt-Lynnes
Raymond Chandler
1947

Corruption of the City

          ...... Marlowe goes beyond the traditional chivalric readings and can instead be interpreted as a genuine representation of a traumatized veteran in American society. Substituting the horror of the trenches for the corruption of the city. Chandler formed a disillusioned protagonist in an uncaring America.
            Chandler did so with the sophistication necessary to straddle genre fiction and canonical literature.

from online introduction to
War Noir
Sarah Trott
2016
                                   http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1990

Life Mattered

                                 Chandler wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.

The New Yorker
on The Long Goodbye

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George Platt Lynes
1947
                          http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/chandler.html

Bunker Hill

He Spent Much Time

       Chandler got women's clothing and the interiors of houses so right, and he spent much time describing both.

Judith Freeman
on Raymond Chandler

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Caroline Gamon

A Disturbed Man

       It's a moody, brooding book in which Marlowe is less a detective than a disturbed man of Forty-two on a quest for some evidence of truth and humanity.

Anthony Boucher
on The Long Goodbye
New York Times
April 25th 1954

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Scott Laumann

Too Damn Much

                      You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.

Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye
1953

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Robert Abbett

To Die a Little

          I went back up the steps and into the bedroom and pulled the bed to pieces and remade it, There was a long dark hair on one of the pillows. There was a lump of lead in the pit of my stomach. The french have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

Raymond Chandler

The Long Goodbye

1953

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unknown

Taste It Slowly

Raymond Chandler

No Worse Than Others

              People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped and murdered. People were hungry, sick, bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye
1953

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Herbert Gehr
1945