James M. Cain · 116 pages
Rating: (25K votes)
“Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.”
“Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.”
“I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church.”
“They threw me off the haytruck about noon.”
“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 weren’t 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 money’s worth that night.”
“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.”
“O.K."
"Gee I'm glad."
"Me too. I'm so sick of hot dogs and beer and apple pie with cheese on the side I could heave it all in the river."
"You'll love it, Frank. We'll get a place up in the mountains, where it's cool, and then, after I get my act ready, we can go all over the world with it. Go as we please, do as we please, and have plenty of money to spend. Have you got a little bit of gypsy in you?"
"Gypsy? I had rings in my ears when I was born.”
“She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night.”
“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. [I]t’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.”
“I bit her. I sunk my teeth into her lips so deep I could feel the blood spurt into my mouth. It was running down her neck when I carried her upstairs.”
“En realidad, lo único que quise en este mundo fue a ella. Pero eso es bastante. No creo que muchas mujeres consigan ni siquiera eso.”
“And Sackett had started in howling for blood. He wanted the death penalty. Oh, he’s a blood-thirsty lad, Sackett is. That’s why it stimulates me to work against him. He really believes hanging them does some good. You’re playing for stakes when you’re playing against Sackett.”
“Connie drove a silver Camry with rosary beads hanging from her rearview mirror and a Smith& Wesson stuck under the seat. No matter whatwent down, Connie was covered.”
“That was a kiss for the record books.”
“They say, if you care about something, you have to set it free and if it comes back to you, it was meant to be."
"They're full of shit."
Obviously, I failed spectacularly at being philosophical.”
“So a new element darkled in their already darkling mood: a somber, deep-rooted bitterness which would grow and grow until it would make of them—those who survived—the tough, mean, totally cynical infantry fighters which their leaders fondly on sentimental grounds already believed they were, and which all of them, everybody, hated the Japanese for being.”
“Wave to the nice tourists, Sparkle. I promise it won't cause pestilence and firestorms."
Elena bit the inside of her cheek at Aodhan's glare-she'd never seen anyone crack his reserved shell. "Sparkle and Bluebell, nice."
"Never," Aodhan said, hands stubbornly on the girder, "ever repeat that. Illium seems to have forgotten I promised to separate his tongue from his mouth should he utter it again in this immortal lifetime.”
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