Top 15 James M. Cain Quotes

A home is not a museum. It doesn't have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.

By nine, Mildred was powdered, puffed, perfumed, and patted to that state of semi-transparency that a woman seems to achieve when she is really dressed to go out.

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

A receptionist is a lazy dame that can’t do anything on earth, and wants to sit out front where everybody can watch her do it.

He was enthusiastic about everything, but when she came in with the pie he grew positively lyrical.

She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

If you have to do it, you can do it.

I understood it now, understood a lot of things I had never understood before. And mostly I understood what a woman could mean to a man. Before, she had been a pair of eyes, and a shape, something to get excited about. Now she seemed something to lean on, and draw something from, that nothing else could give me. I thought of books I had read, about worship of the Earth, and how she was always called Mother, and none of it made much sense, but those big round breasts did, when I put my head on them, and they began to tremble, and I began to tremble.

Sit here, now, and look. The water, the surf, the colors on the shore. You think they make the beauty of the tropical sea, aye, lad? They do not. 'Tis the knowledge of what lurks below the surface of it, that awful-looking thing, as you call it, that carries death with every move that it makes. So it is, so it is with all beauty. So it is with Mexico. I hope you never forget it.

When she tired, I loosened up a little, to let her blow. Yes, it was rape, but only technical, brother, only technical. Above the waist, maybe she was worried about the sacrilegio , but from the waist down she wanted me, bad. There couldn’t be any doubt about that.

There's a shark. Following the ship."I tried not to look, but couldn't help it. I saw a flash of dirty white down in the green. We walked back to the deck chairs."Walter, we'll have to wait. Till the moon comes up.""I guess we better have a moon.""I want to see that fin. That black fin. Cutting the water in the moonlight.

... Walter, the time has come.""What do you mean, Phyllis?""For me to meet my bridegroom. The only one I ever loved. One night I'll drop off the stern of the ship. Then, little by little I'll feel his icy fingers creeping into my heart.

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn’t have the money and I didn’t have the woman.

I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake.

That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.