«It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization. All this still is not quite enough.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.»

—From: RAYMOND CHANDLER, ‘The Simple Art Of Murder’. At age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression, and went on to write classics like The Big Sleep, The Long Good-Bye and Farewell, My Lovely. [Full post ‘Time Of Heroes’ at Nothing To Flawnt] [Deutsch]

Posted at 6:55pm and tagged with: 100 days 2012, Raymond Chandler, quote,.