Jim Thompson
Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.Collection: Men
There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.Collection: Goes On
There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.Collection: Writing
It doesn't matter what answers you get if you ask the wrong questions.Collection: Answers
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.Collection: Baby
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. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard.Collection: Mean
When life attains a crisis, man’s focus narrows. […] The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion.Collection: Men
I found out long ago that the place where the law is apt to be abused the most is right around a courthouse.Collection: Long Ago
There is only one plot-things are not what they seem.Collection: Writing
I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped.Collection: Mind
If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we’ve got the least excuse for it.Collection: Mistake
A weed is a plant out of place.Collection: Weed
You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off.Collection: Cutting
What smells good in the store may stink in the stewpot.Collection: Smell
You've got forever; and somehow you can't do much with it. You've got forever; and it's a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators.Collection: Forever
I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.Collection: Nice
I ain't saying you're a liar, because that wouldn't be polite. But I'll tell you this, ma'am. If I loved liars, I'd hug you to death.Collection: Liars
Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow.Collection: Dad
In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He’ll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can’t figure out whether the hero’s laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff—a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I’m not lazy, whatever else I am. I’ll tell you everything.Collection: Girl
If we all had all we wanted to eat, we'd crap too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry.Collection: Paper
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, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore.Collection: Book
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 you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you could be doing something pretty nice. And then I thought, well, maybe it ain't so strange after all. Maybe it's like this with most people, everyone doing pretty much the same thing except in a different way. And all the time they're holding heaven in their hands.Collection: Nice