James Crumley Quotes

“Son, never trust a man who doesn't drink because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.”

— James Crumley

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

— James Crumley

“Lady bartenders live a tougher life than anybody knows.
Dancing Bear”

— James Crumley

The sun rose each morning to stare into my face with the blank but touching gaze of a lovely retarded child.

— James Crumley

“I had done either too much coke or too little, a constant problem in my life.”

— James Crumley

“Stories are like snapshots, pictures snatched out of time, with clean hard edges. But this was life, and life always begins and ends in a bloody muddle, womb to tomb, just one big mess, a can of worms left to rot in the sun.”

— James Crumley

“I knew the men were probably terrible people who whistled at pretty girls, treated their wives like servants, and voted for Nixon every chance they got, but as far as I was concerned, they beat the hell out of a Volvo-load of liberals for hard work and good times.”

— James Crumley

“I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead
that's environmentally sound.”

— James Crumley

“Maybe I will go to Paris.
Who knows? But I'll sure as hell never
Go back to Texas again”

— James Crumley

I chuckled like Aldo Ray. If I had to endure his l'homme du monde act, he had to suffer my jaded alcoholic private eye.

— James Crumley

I didn't know what was going on, didn't understand a bit of it, didn't like any of it. Maybe that's why the first thing I packed was my guns. If your brain won't work, wave a gun around. Sometimes that helps.

— James Crumley

Nobody lives forever, nobody stays young long enough. My past seemed like so much excess baggage, my future a series of long goodbyes, my present an empty flask, the last good drink already bitter on my tongue.

— James Crumley

“It wasn't a party that a Republican could understand
the marijuana smoke sweet on the air, the occasional cocaine sniffle, cold Mexican beer, good food, great conversation, and laughter
but a Parisian deconstructionist scholar might find it about as civilized as America gets. Or at least the one I met, who was visiting at UTEP, maintained. Somewhere along the way, he claimed, Americans had forgotten how to have a good time. In the name of good health, good taste, and political correctness from both sides of the spectrum, we were being taught how to behave. America was becoming a theme park, not as in entertainment, but as in a fascist Disneyland.”

— James Crumley

“Youth endures all things, kings and poetry and love. Everything but time.”

— James Crumley

“Home is where you hang your hangover.”

— James Crumley

“Consideration touches more deeply and longer than passion.”

— James Crumley

I try to stay two drinks ahead of reality and three behind a drunk

— James Crumley

“The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk.”

— James Crumley

“There's no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time.”

— James Crumley