Brian

“The most durable thing in writing is
style. It is a projection of personality and you have
to have a personality before you can project it. It
is the product of emotion and perception.”
― Raymond Chandler

“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

“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true.... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.”
― Christopher Hitchens