Quotes from Dorothy B. Hughes

I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.

He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.

It's harder to come back than it is to arrive.

He finished his drink. 'I don't like mornings either,' he said. "That's why I'm a writer.

Once he'd had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.

There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn't call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn't think you could.

She carried her head like a lady and her body like a snake.

People were nice if you found the right ones. The trouble was there were so many of the wrong ones.

She caught up her purse and she ran, ran as if she raced with Death, and as if Death were the fleeter of foot.

He didn't consciously bring Brub to memory. It was one of those minnows of thought, darting through the unruffled pond of his thinking.

There were always eyes. A little tailor on his way home from a movie. A waitress in a drive-in. A butcher-boy on a bicycle. A room clerk with a wet pointed nose. A detective's wife who was alert, too alert. Whose eyes saw too much. There were always eyes but they didn't see. He had proved it.

But not to our Muffin.

She was afraid. It wasn't a tremble of fear. It was a dark hood hanging over her head. She was meant to die. That was why she was on the Chief speeding eastward. This was her bier.

At eight the bar was emptied of all but those whose goal was alcoholism

No reason to feel nervous at night, not even at eleven thirty at night, in the heart of New York. Nothing ever happened to her kind of people; things happened to people living down those cross streets in old red bricks or old brownstones. Things threatened silver and gold dancers there in the Iridium Room across. But things didn't happen to her or anyone she knew.

Dixon Steele: You know, when you first walked into the police station, I said to myself, "There she is — the one that's different. She's not coy or cute or corny. She's a good guy — I'm glad she's on my side. She speaks her mind and she knows what she wants." Laurel Gray: Thank you, sir. But let me add: I also know what I don't want — and I don't want to be rushed.

He wanted to know about her. But he couldn't ask questions, not open questions. She was like him; she'd lie.

He drove until emotional exhaustion left him empty as a gourd. Until no tears, no rage, no pity had meaning for him.

She gave him a woman smile. Not for him, for Laurel because she scorned Laurel.

He'd always, all of his life, loved the sound of breaking water. Nothing that had happened had changed that. The crawling of water over sand, the hush of a word no … no … no … not even that had changed his love of the power of the sea.

It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lifting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. There was something in it akin to flying; the sense of being lifted high above crawling earth, of being a part of the wildness of air.

Known he couldn't hurt her and she couldn't hurt him. Because neither of them gave a damn about anyone or anything except their own skins.

You'll get him," Sylvia said, pushing conviction into her wish. "We'll get him." Brub believed it. "But how many women will be murdered first?" He tipped up the glass.

I was born when you kissed me.