James M. Cain > Quotes

“If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either”
― James M. Cain

“Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.”
― James M. Cain

“Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.”
― James M Cain

“I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“If you have to do it, you can do it.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“I ripped all her clothes off. She twisted and turned, slow, so they would slip out from under her. Then she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in snaky curls. Her eye was all black, and her breasts weren’t drawn up and pointing up at me, but soft, and spread out in two big pink splotches. She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money’s worth that night.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“They threw me off the haytruck about noon.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“I write of the wish that comes true--for some reason, a terrifying thought.”
― James M. Cain

“Tomorrow night, if I come back, there'll be kisses. Lovely ones, Frank. Not drunken kisses. Kisses with dreams in them. Kisses that come from life, not death.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“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.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“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.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“A woman is a funny animal.”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“O.K."
"Gee I'm glad."
"Me too. I'm so sick of hot dogs and beer and apple pie with cheese on the side I could heave it all in the river."
"You'll love it, Frank. We'll get a place up in the mountains, where it's cool, and then, after I get my act ready, we can go all over the world with it. Go as we please, do as we please, and have plenty of money to spend. Have you got a little bit of gypsy in you?"
"Gypsy? I had rings in my ears when I was born.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“A lot of novelists start late—Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.”
― James M Cain

“let's get stinko.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“A year and a half had indeed made some changes in Veda's appearance. She was still no more than medium height, but her haughty carriage made her seem taller. The hips were as slim as ever, but had taken on some touch of voluptuousness. The legs were Mildred's, to the last graceful contour. But the most noticeable change was what Monty brutally called the Dairy: two round, swelling protuberances that had appeared almost overnight on the high, arching chest. They would have been large, even for a woman: but for a child of thirteen they were positively startling. Mildred had a mystical feeling about them: they made her think tremulously of Love, Motherhood, and similar milky concepts.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“We’re just two punks, Frank. God kissed us on the brow that night. He gave us all that two people can ever have and we just weren’t the kind that could have it. [I]t’s a big airplane engine, that takes you through the sky, right up to the top of the mountain. But when you put it in a Ford, it just shakes it to pieces. That’s what we are, Frank, a couple of Fords.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“I knew then what I had done. I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in her power, so there was one person in the world that could point a a finger at me, and I would have to die. I had done all that for her, and I never want to see her again as long as I lived.

That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“There's a shark. Following the ship.'

I tried not to look, but couldn't help it. I saw a flash of dirty white down in the green. We walked back to the deck chairs.

Walter, we'll have to wait. Till the moon comes up.'

I guess we better have a moon.'

I want to see that fin. That black fin. Cutting the water in the moonlight.”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.”
― James M. Cain, The Butterfly

“That's all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“...if he can write a book at all, a writer cannot do it by peeping over his shoulder at somebody else, any more than a woman can have a baby by watching some other woman have one. It is a genital process, and all of its stages are intra-abdominal;”
― James M. Cain, The Butterfly

“We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual.”
― James M. Cain, The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

“There was something unnatural, a little unhealthy, about the way she inhaled Veda's smell as she dedicated the rest of her life to this child who had been spared.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce