James M. Cain

Sit here, now, and look. The water, the surf, the colors on the shore. You think they make the beauty of the tropical sea, aye, lad? They do not. 'Tis the knowledge of what lurks below the surface of it, that awful-looking thing, as you call it, that carries death with every move that it makes. So it is, so it is with all beauty. So it is with Mexico. I hope you never forget it.

If you have to do it, you can do it.

A home is not a museum. It doesn't have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.

She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing his car, that’s larceny.

I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake.

Love, when you get fear in it, it’s not love any more. It’s hate.

That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or , or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices, and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.