If you have to do it, you can do it. - James M. Cain

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

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.

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