"The two cops dragging the little guy out stopped dead still. The other one washing the bloodstains from the seat quit swishing the brush over the wicker and held his breath. Nobody ever spoke that way to Dilwick. Nobody from the biggest politician in the state to the hardest apple that ever stepped out of a pen. Nobody ever did because Dilwick would cut them up into fine pieces with his bare hands and enjoy it. That was Dilwick, the dirtiest, roughest cop who ever walked a beat or swung a nightstick over a skull. Crude, he was. Crude, hard and dirty and afraid of nothing. Hed sooner draw blood from a face than eat and everybody knew it. Thats why nobody ever spoke to him that way. That is, nobody except me. Because Im the same way myself."
Frank Morrison Spillane, better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, called the "king of pulp fiction". He was best known for stories featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer.
"I knew a couple of things... during the war years they came out with reprints of all the Dumas novels, Moby Dick, for the servicemen, and I saw this and believe me Im a very sharp merchandiser, and I say this is the new marketplace for writing: original paperback books."
"The little guys face was a bloody mess. Between the puffballs of blue-black flesh that used to be eyelids, the dull gleam of shock-deadened pupils watched Dilwick uncomprehendingly. His lips were swollen things of lacerated skin, with slow trickles of blood making crooked paths from the corners of his mouth through the stubble of a beard to his chin, dripping onto a stained shirt. Dilwick stood just outside the glare of the lamp, dangling like the Sword of Damocles over the guys head. He was sweating too. His shirt clung to the meaty expanse of his huge neck. He pushed his beefy hand further into the leather glove and swung. The solid smack of his open hand on the little guys jaw was nasty. His chair went over backward and his head cracked against the concrete floor of the room like a ripe melon. Dilwick put his hands on his hips and glared down at the caricature that once was human."
"All I saw was the dame standing there in the glare of the headlights waving her arms like a huge puppet and the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash of power and almost ran up the side of a cliff as the car fishtailed. The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to the pavement and held. Somehow I had managed a sweeping curve around the babe. For a few seconds she had been living on stolen time because instead of getting out of the way she had tried to stay in the beam of the headlights. I sat there and let myself shake. The butt that had fallen out of my mouth had burned a hole in the leg of my pants and I flipped it out the window. The stink of burned rubber and brake lining hung in the air like smoke and I was thinking of every damn thing I ever wanted to say to a hairbrained woman so I could have it ready when I got my hands on her. That was as far as I got. She was there in the car beside me, the door slammed shut and she said, "Thanks, mister."
"The temperature was six below zero and it kept me dying on the spot because the blood coagulated and clotted in ugly smears of cloth and skin and the pain hadnt started yet, so when the little fat guy who saw my eyes open and still bright pulled me away from the carnage he was almost in the shock I was going into. Nobody would listen to him. He was a drunk. I was nearly dead. Sometimes the body responds to a stimulus that cant be explained. He got me upright. I walked woodenly, dyingly. I was sat in an old car. The fat man rolled down the windows. The blood stayed frozen. My hands were numb and I couldnt feel my feet. Idly, I wondered what frostbite was like. Breathing was a thing that was happening, but at a pace that said it could slow, then stop at any time. A dull, squeezing sensation of pain was beginning to gnaw on my insides and I knew that eventually, and very soon, it would grow into a terrible, devastating animal with an awful hunger and I would be eaten alive by it. I wanted to scream but nothing would come out."
"The cops arent exactly dumb, you know. We can get our own answers. Not like I can. Thats why you buzzed me so fast. You can figure things out as quickly as I can, but you havent got the ways and means of doing the dirty work. Thats where I come in. Youll be right behind me every inch of the way, but when the pinch comes Ill get shoved aside and you slap the cuffs on. That is, if you can shove me aside. I dont think you can."
"See, heroes never die. John Wayne isnt dead, Elvis isnt dead. Otherwise you dont have a hero. You cant kill a hero. Thats why I never let him get older."
"Even if we end terror and even if we eliminate tension, even if we reduce arms and restrict conflict, even if peace were to come to the nations, we would turn from this struggle only to find ourselves on a new battleground as filled with danger and as fraught with difficulty as any ever faced by man. For many of our most urgent problems do not spring from the cold war or even from the ambitions of our adversaries. These are the problems which will persist beyond the cold war. They are the ominous obstacles to mans effort to build a great world society--a place where every man can find a life free from hunger and disease-a life offering the chance to seek spiritual fulfillment unhampered by the degradation of bodily misery."
"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the waters edge."
"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily."
George Santayana"Necessità l ci nduce, e non diletto."
Divine Comedy"Gentlemen look on this wonder, Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it, For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant, For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolld. In this head the all-baffling brain, In it and below it the makings of heroes. (7)"
"Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is calld Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead."