James M. Cain

"They threw me off the hay truck about noon."

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

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

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

"Were the friendliest enemies that ever were."

"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."

"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 werent 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 moneys worth that night."

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

"Restaurant, hey. Thats what Ive got. Whole goddam country lives selling hot dogs to each other."

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

"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.""Its a date."

"We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual."