Quotes from James M. Cain

The postman always rings twice.

If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either

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

You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it's working on; then you can write a novel.

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

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake

If you have to do it, you can do it.

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

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.

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

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.

They threw me off the haytruck about noon.

I write of the wish that comes true--for some reason, a terrifying thought.

She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

A home is not a museum. It doesn't have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.

A woman is a funny animal.

She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night.

let's get stinko.

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 knew then what I had done. I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in her power, so there was one person in the world that could point a a finger at me, and I would have to die. I had done all that for her, and I never want to see her again as long as I lived. That's all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.

There's a shark. Following the ship.' I tried not to look, but couldn't help it. I saw a flash of dirty white down in the green. We walked back to the deck chairs. Walter, we'll have to wait. Till the moon comes up.' I guess we better have a moon.' I want to see that fin. That black fin. Cutting the water in the moonlight.

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

Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.