Quotes from Richard Stark

They had this block to themselves. The windows of all the tenements on both sides were marked with the white X of urban renewal; they stood nearly empty, waiting for the wreckers. Within them the cockroaches crawled and the rats chittered, but the humans were away, infesting some other neighborhood.

I just want you to know that if you ever need my help again, you'll have to blackmail me.

I'm beginning to regret that suitcase, he said. I admit it freely. Money is a burden. I may write a monograph on the subject.

character cries out accusingly at Grofield, "God damn it, all you want to do is die a smart-ass!" (177). The net

It was strange, in a way, that now it was only the people he remembered. At the time he had never thought about people at all, but only of issues, of theories and dogmas and the masses, and now that it was all over and half his brain had been lost in the fight he never thought of the issues at all. Charles

She smiled, looking pert, and said, "I love to be the center of attention." "The hell you do. That Gale Storm bit doesn't suit you, honey.

San Luis Potosí. The ruby in the forehead of Old May-hee-co.

said, "All right, I give up. We have to drive to Acapulco, and we have to take the only road, and I don't see how we're going to get there." "What we'll do," he said, "is drive as far as Taxco, and then scout the territory. We can't make plans of our own until we know how they're set up. And they've got to be south of Taxco

The room was full of law. Apparently somebody on Younger's force had invited the state police to attend after all; the pack of technical men, with their cameras and chalk, powders and notebooks and little white envelopes, all seemed to professional, too sleek, too quiet and efficient to be any part of the local law. The local law was three dough-faced farm hands in rumpled blue uniforms, standing around the room looking for traffic to direct.

The technicians worked around him now as though they expected to launch him into space.

This is crazy, he said. You don't just shoot people. Yes I do, Parker said.

The funnies call it the syndicate. The goons and hustlers call it the Outfit. You call it the organization. I hope you people have fun with your words. But I don't care if you call yourselves the Red Cross, you owe me forty-five thousand dollars and you'll pay me back whether you like it or not.

Up over the mountain east of town and down the other side to El Marqués, in its own way a more exclusive and expensive resort than Acapulco next door. El Marques, with its peculiar long beach of gray sand the color

What was the sense of talking about a problem if you didn't have a way to solve it?

You are old, Father William—

Don't thank me," she said. "I didn't do it out of any love for you. If I'd refused, you'd have killed me. This way, I've got a few hours' head start.

If you leave me here," the guy on the floor said, "he'll kill me tomorrow morning." Parker looked at him. "So you've still got tonight," he said.

When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.

I'm going to drink his blood, I'm going to chew up his heart and spit it into the gutter for the dogs to raise a leg at. I'm going to peel the skin off him and rip out his veins and hang him with them.

The office women looked at him and shivered. They knew he was a bastard, they his big hands were born to slap with, they knew his face would never break into a smile when he looked at a woman. They knew what he was, they thanked God for their husbands, and still they shivered. Because they knew how he would fall on a woman in the night. Like a tree".

Never leave a guy alive who'd like to see you dead.

When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.

Already today I hit you twice. Once I knocked the wind out of you, once I knocked the consciousness out of you. Here you are back the third time. You call that smart?

You don't have any claim on the money, and there's no proof I ever saw or touched or spent a dollar of it. You want to take me to court?" "You're in court right now," Parker said.