Quotes from Jim Thompson

You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off.

I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped.

The darkness and myself. Everything else was gone. And the little that was left of me was going, faster and faster.

Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed wire handle.

There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.

A weed is a plant out of place.

There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I've used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.

I ain't saying you're a liar, because that wouldn't be polite. But I'll tell you this, ma'am. If I loved liars, I'd hug you to death.

I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more.

You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore.

I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped.

Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.

What smells good in the store may stink in the stewpot.

I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.

It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I'd pinch myself, figuratively speaking - I had to keep pinching myself. Then I'd wake up kind of in reverse; I'd go back to the nightmare I had to live in. And everything would be clear and reasonable.

When life attains a crisis, man's focus narrows. […] The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion.

Practically every fella that breaks the law has a danged good reason, to his own way of thinking, which makes every case exceptional, not just one or two. Take you, for example.

I'd forgotten about it, and now I forgot it again. There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.

The phone rang. Softly, in actuality, yet it seemed loud and ominous, as phones do at night in dark hotel rooms.

what else is there to do but laugh and joke...how else can you bear up under the unbearable?

I found out long ago that the place where the law is apt to be abused the most is right around a courthouse.

Usually, during the past fifteen-odd years, I'd hated to see the morning come. That's a psychotic symptom, you know, not wanting to awaken--hating to face things that are bound to be more than you can handle.

There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.

Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted deserved what he got.