Jim Thompson Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

You've got forever; and somehow you can't do much with it. You've got forever; and it's a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators.

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

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.

A weed is a plant out of place.

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

If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we’ve got the least excuse for it.

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.

If we all had all we wanted to eat, we'd crap too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry.

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

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

It doesn't matter what answers you get if you ask the wrong questions.

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

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.

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

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 world was a shitpot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it.

If I had to marry someone, it wouldn't be a bossy little gal with a tongue like barbed-wire and a mind about as narrow.