Dorothy B. Hughes > Quotes

“He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man

“It’s harder to come back than it is to arrive.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“Once he’d had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He finished his drink. 'I don’t like mornings either,' he said. “That’s why I’m a writer.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“She carried her head like a lady and her body like a snake.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, Dread Journey

“There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn’t call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn’t think you could.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man

“She caught up her purse and she ran, ran as if she raced with Death, and as if Death were the fleeter of foot.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, Dread Journey

“People were nice if you found the right ones. The trouble was there were so many of the wrong ones.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man

“There were always eyes. A little tailor on his way home from a movie. A waitress in a drive-in. A butcher-boy on a bicycle. A room clerk with a wet pointed nose. A detective’s wife who was alert, too alert. Whose eyes saw too much. There were always eyes but they didn’t see. He had proved it.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He scraped through the dark sand to the center house, two stories, both pouring bands of light into the fog. There was warmth and gaiety within, through the downstairs window he could see young people gathered around a piano, their singing mocking the forces abroad on this cruel night. She was there, proptected by happiness and song and the good. He was separated from her only by a sand yard and a dark fence, by a lighted window and by her protectors.
He stood there until he was trembling with pity and rage. Then he fled, but his flight was slow as the flight in a dream, impeded by the deep sand and the blurring hands of the fog. He fled from the goodness of that home, and his hatred for Laurel throttled his brain. If she had come back to him, he would not be shut out, an outcast in a strange, cold world. ”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He didn’t consciously bring Brub to memory. It was one of those minnows of thought, darting through the unruffled pond of his thinking.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“They were one unto the other, a circle whirling evenly, effortlessly, endlessly. He knew beauty and the intensity of a dream and he was meshed in a womb he called happiness. He did not think: This must come to an end in time. A circle had no beginning or end; it existed. He did not allow thought to enter the hours that he waited for her, laved in memory of her presence. He seldom left the apartment in those days. In the outside world there was time; in time, there was impatience. Better to remain within the dream.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“She was afraid. It wasn’t a tremble of fear. It was a dark hood hanging over her head. She was meant to die. That was why she was on the Chief speeding eastward. This was her bier.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, Dread Journey

“Danger is sweet.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, The So Blue Marble

“But not to our Muffin.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“He wanted to know about her. But he couldn’t ask questions, not open questions. She was like him; she’d lie.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He’d always, all of his life, loved the sound of breaking water. Nothing that had happened had changed that. The crawling of water over sand, the hush of a word no … no … no … not even that had changed his love of the power of the sea.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“At eight the bar was emptied of all but those whose goal was alcoholism”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He drove until emotional exhaustion left him empty as a gourd. Until no tears, no rage, no pity had meaning for him.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“Famine and War. War breeding destruction. The Horsemen of Chaos waiting their time. Madness. Hell. Once he hadn’t believed in hell. Once he hadn’t believed in a personal demoniac deity. But he’d seen men possessed. He knew powers of evil flogged the earth and powers of good weren’t strong enough to exorcise them. The powers of good, what had happened to them? Where was heaven? If there was hell, there must be heaven. There must be the balance.

He said bitterly, “We have to die to get to heaven.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes

“She gave him a woman smile. Not for him, for Laurel because she scorned Laurel.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“The criminal doesn’t escape.’ Dix smiled wryly. Brub said, ‘I won’t say that. Although I honestly don’t think he ever does escape. He has to live with himself. He’s caught there in that lonely place.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lifting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. There was something in it akin to flying; the sense of being lifted high above crawling earth, of being a part of the wildness of air.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“His mouth was sharp with questions, they were like tacks pricking his tongue.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He waited for her to say more but only silence roiled about them.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“The church was only round the corner and they made it as the last bell was an echo, marching down the aisle together, the old man and the old lady and the kids, the eight kids. Eight kids and not enough bread for one. Kneeling together, praying together, marching out again into the cold gloomy Chicago Sunday. The hot sweating Chicago Sunday.
“It’s a fine family you have there, Mr...”
The old man puffing himself up and accepting the compliments on the church steps and the old lady smirking timidly and fingering her worn black gloves. She blacked them with shoe blacking on Saturday nights. The kids standing like clodhoppers with their welts itching under their sawtoothed winter underwear, under their sweaty summer floursacks.
The priest in his stained cassock looking like a pale, pious, nearsighted Saint. Saints didn’t belong in a slum church; there ought to have been a fighting priest like an avenging angel with a fiery sword. To whack the old man down. To strike the old man and his sanctimonious Sunday smile dead on the church steps”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, Ride the Pink Horse

“He saw her as he would always see her, a slender girl in a simple beige dress, curled in a large wing chair by the white fireplace. The chair was a gaudy piece patterned in greens and purples, like tropical flowers, with a scrawl of cerise breaking the pattern. Her hair was the color of palest gold, a silvery gold, and she wore it pulled away from her face into a curl at the back of her neck. She had a fine face, nothing pretty-pretty about it, a strong face with high cheek bones and a straight nose. Her eyes were beautiful, sea blue, slanted like wings; and her mouth was a beautiful curve. Yet she wasn’t beautiful; you wouldn’t look at her in a room of pretty women, in a bar or night spot. You wouldn’t notice her; she’d be too quiet; she was a lady and she wouldn’t want to be noticed.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“He walked on, quiet as the fog.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“Again in the dark, sea-scented night, he was filled with power and excitement and rhythm.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“Her name was Mildred Atkinson and she had led a very stupid life. Grade school, high school—Hollywood High but she was no beauty queen—business college and a job in an insurance office. She was twenty-six years old and she was a good girl, her parents sobbed. She played bridge with girl friends and she once taught a Sunday-school class. She didn’t have any particular gentleman friend, she went out with several. Not often, you could bet. The only exciting thing that had ever happened to her was to be raped and murdered. Even then she’d only been subbing for someone else.”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place