By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.


In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Hiney, Tom; Frank MacShane (2000). The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. p. 77. ISBN 0871137860.

Raymond Chandler Quotes

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois...

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois...

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois...

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois...