Chandler’s Law
You can’t win them all.
Raymond Chandler, British-bred American detective story writer, salted his hard-boiled prose with numerous insights into life generally. This universal law - the earliest occurrence of it in print according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (1982) - appears in The Long Goodbye (1954). The line is delivered about half-way through the book by Roger Wade to Dr. Edward Loring: “Take it easy Doc. You can’t win them all.” Neither Wade nor Loring are very nice men, but both are blessed with exceedingly attractive wives, as the detective hero Philip Marlowe has occasion to note in some detail.
Discussion of Chandler’s Law
Post your comment here
