“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.” – Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Today in History, July 23, 1888:

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.”

Raymond Chandler, father of the hard scrabble detectives like Sam Spade among others, is born in Chicago.

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”