When life attains a crisis, man’s focus narrows. [...] The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion. - Jim Thompson

He had made personality a profession, created a career out of selling himself. And he could not stray far, or for long, from his self-made self.

We're living in a funny world, kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty.

She wasn't much over five feet and a hundred pounds, and she looked a little scrawny around the neck and ankles. But that was all right. It was perfectly all right. The good Lord had known just where to put that flesh where it would really do some good.