"If I had to marry someone, it wouldn't be a bossy little gal with a tongue like barbed-wire and a mind about as narrow."
- Jim Thompson
"The world was a shitpot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it."
"Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think..."
"I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn’t anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops… Every goddamned restau..."
"I'd forgotten about it, and now I forgot it again. There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living."
"You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, ..."
"He had never before realized the blessedness of silence - the freedom to be silent, rather, if one chose. He had never realized, somehow, that such blessedness might be his privilege. He was Doc Mc Co..."
"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 ..."
"I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of y..."
"I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more."