“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.” — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
“It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I'd pinch myself, figuratively speaking - I had to… — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
“Yeah, Johnnie,’ I said, ‘it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way. And I’ll tell you why. Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it. They can’t see that things are screwed up, so they’re not worried about it. What they’re worried about is guys like you. ‘They’re worried… — Jim Thompson Copy Share
“Flight is many things. Something clean and swift, like a bird skimming across the sky. Or something filthy and crawling; a series of crablike movements through figurative and literal slime, a process of creeping ahead, jumping sideways, running backward. It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads,… — Jim Thompson Copy Share
“Well. Well? What are you going to do? What are you going to say? What are you going to say when you’re drowning in your own dung and they keep booting you back into it, when all the screams in hell wouldn’t be as loud as you want to scream, when you’re at the bottom of the pit and the… — Jim Thompson Copy Share
“Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand:… — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you… — Jim Thompson Copy Share
“He picked her up and tossed her on the bed. They had a hell of a time. But afterward, after she had gone back to her own room, depression came to him and what had seemed like such a hell of a time became distasteful, even a little disgusting. It was the depression of surfeit, the tail of selfindulgence’s kit.… — Jim Thompson Copy Share
Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was… — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
“if I wasn't a decent woman I'd heist a leg and pee in your ear until it washed out that stinking pile of crap… — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
“Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted deserved what he got.” — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
“He could be breaking apart inside and you'd never know it from the way he acted. He'd be just as pleasant and polite as… — Jim Thompson Copy Share Image
