Quotes from Richard S. Prather

He was dead, all right. He had been shot, poisoned, stabbed, and strangled. Either somebody had really had it in for him or four people had killed him. Or else it was the cleverest suicide I'd ever heard of.

She was a full lipped and hipped italian tomato with Rome burning in her eyes. She had the look of a carnival in Rio, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or bullfights in Spain, or Saturday night in my apartment.

the normal expression in her dark eyes always made me think she was about to tell a pleasantly dirty story.

And here I was in brown slacks and a tweed jacket over a sports shirt called, according to the salesman, Hot Hula. At least there were no wild Balinese babes doing things on the shirt; it was just colorful.

She held the robe together with both hands—there was so much to cover that it took both hands—and stepped aside as I walked

Frank Harris' My Life and Loves.

thought: It's a sign. It's a sign I shouldn't have done it. This is my karma. Instant karma, that's what. I'm paying for my sin before I even get to commit it.

I was supposed to be the captain of this damn rocket ship and I was sure going to clobber the guy that tied me out on the nose of the thing. Here we were going through space a million miles an hour and we were pointed right at the moon and we were going to crash for sure and my head wasn't that hard. I had a pretty good idea what would happen when the moon and I met head on.

His gun cracked again and he missed me, though I felt the hot wind hiss past my cheek.

He said with utter weariness, That bastard Brane had me where Mamie wore the beads. And he kept pushing me; he was greedy and I was sick of the whole mess I'd got into.

I dug into my coat pocket and hauled out my pride and joy: one Zippo one-zip windproof lighter that the winds of the last few days had forced me to buy. I guess the ads had sold me: Why, zip, zip, zip. . .when one zip does it!

S. Highway 91 to a small cocktail lounge called Cosmos, just past the Algiers and on the opposite side of the Strip.

The ring of keys was still in my coat pocket, and I pulled them out as I reached the door, flashed my light briefly on the lock and then started choosing keys. The second one turned the lock noiselessly. I pushed the door open easily, slipped inside, and shut it.

Henry Miller's Air-Conditioned Nightmare

passed to make anything a crime. Do you realize, Mr. Scott, that 'a heavy progressive, or graduated, income tax' is one of the cardinal points of the Communist Manifesto? Sure. Point two, between 'Abolition of property in land' and 'Abolition of all right of inheritance.' But, since we're stuck with it, Mr. Lorimer, what was the beef against you?

could hear a funny sound. It was a faint, but very strange noise, like muffled harmonicas, or a far-off herd of elephants with upset stomachs.

Dedicated to all those who are in love with love and have eaten in the Banyan Tree

We stood facing each other. White witch doctor against black witch doctor. Hero against Villain—or so I liked to think of it, at least. Who would win? Would Civilization be saved? Equally important, would I?

heard his cry but it was like an imagined sound, for it was mingled with the pulse of his life, and it seemed the rain was red blood gushing upon me from the sky, covering my body and mixing with the mud beneath us and around us until we were drowning in a great, thick lake of blood. My mind was empty except for that one thought of red rain steadily falling and then, finally, even that thought grew dim and there was stillness all around me. I

one lovable Gronk from Jupiter.

cat in A Christmas Carol, and peering

I lit a cigarette and said to Feldspen, "That sounds to me like the biggest extortion this side of the Federal Income Tax. Are you sure the guy was serious?

he was still belligerent, angry, stupid, always ready and even anxious to take a poke at somebody, anybody. It was as if he generated inside himself the poison which kept him continually irritated and angry and sick, like a snake that insists on biting itself.

A year ago, she'd been photographed in a green and bosky glade, facing a small silver stream that trickled down a gentle slope.