James M. Cain Quotes

A woman is a funny animal.

Under those blue pajamas was a shape to set a man nuts.

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or , or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices, and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.

Tomorrow night, if I come back, there'll be kisses. Lovely ones, Frank. Not drunken kisses. Kisses with dreams in them. Kisses that come from life, not death.""It's a date.

Love, when you get fear in it, it’s not love any more. It’s hate.

Restaurant, hey. That's what I've got. Whole goddam country lives selling hot dogs to each other.

Have you got a little bit of gypsy in you?""Gypsy? I had rings in my ears when I was born.

I ripped all her clothes off. She twisted and turned, slow, so they would slip out from under her. Then she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in snaky curls. Her eye was all black, and her breasts weren't drawn up and pointing up at me, but soft, and spread out in two big pink splotches. She looked like the great-grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night.

We’re just two punks, Frank. God kissed us on the brow that night. He gave us all that two people can ever have. And we just weren’t the kind that could have it. We had all that love, and we just cracked up under it. It’s a big airplane engine, that takes you through the sky, right up to the top of the mountain. But when you put it in a Ford, it just shakes it to pieces. That’s what we are, Frank, a couple of Fords. God is up there laughing at us.

We're the friendliest enemies that ever were.

He might be asleep, but even asleep he looked like he knew more than most guys awake.

Just you and me and the road.

Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing his car, that’s larceny.

I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church.

They threw me off the hay truck about noon.