James M. Cain quotes: top 45 famous quotes by James M. Cain

“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

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

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

— James M. Cain

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

— James M. Cain

“I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake”

— 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

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

— James M. Cain

“I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church.”

— James M. Cain

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

— James M. Cain

“I write of the wish that comes true
for some reason, a terrifying thought.”

— James M. Cain

“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

“They threw me off the haytruck about noon.”

— James M. Cain

A woman is a funny animal.

— James M. Cain

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“Mildred sat quite still, and when she heard Veda drive off she was consumed by a fury so cold that it almost seemed as though she felt nothing at all. It didn't occur to her that she was acting less like a mother than like a lover who had unexpectedly discovered an act of faithlessness, and avenged it.”

— 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

“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

“By nine, Mildred was powdered, puffed, perfumed, and patted to that state of semi-transparency that a woman seems to achieve when she is really dressed to go out.”

— James M. Cain

“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

“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

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

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called.

— James M. Cain

“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

“I bit her. I sunk my teeth into her lips so deep I could feel the blood spurt into my mouth. It was running down her neck when I carried her upstairs.”

— James M. Cain

“She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night.
Postman always rings twice, James Cain.”

— James M. Cain

“We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual.”

— James M. Cain

“Up close, she could see the sharp, cold, look that she constantly shot at Mr. Treviso, particularly when there was a break, and she was waiting to come in. It shattered illusion for Mildred. She preferred to remain at a distance, to enjoy this child as she seemed, rather than as she was.”

— James M. Cain

Veda began it, but when she finished it, or whether she finished it, Mildred never quite knew. Little quivers went through her and they kept going through her the rest of the night, during the supper party, when Veda sat with the white scarf wound around her throat, during the brief half hour, while she undressed Veda, and put the costume away; in the dark, while she lay there alone, trying to sleep, not wanting to sleep.
This was the climax of Mildred's life.

— James M. Cain

“With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture, and this town and its dollar days, and its women that wear uniforms and its men that wear overalls. You think just because you've made a little money you can get a new hairdo and some expensive clothes and turn yourself into a lady. But you can't, because you'll never be anything but a common frump, whose father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing. With this money, I can get away from every rotten, stinking thing that makes me think of this place or you!”

— James M. Cain

“Under those blue pajamas was a shape to set a man nuts ...”

— James M. Cain

“I understood it now, understood a lot of things I had never understood before. And mostly I understood what a woman could mean to a man. Before, she had been a pair of eyes, and a shape, something to get excited about. Now she seemed something to lean on, and draw something from, that nothing else could give me. I thought of books I had read, about worship of the Earth, and how she was always called Mother, and none of it made much sense, but those big round breasts did, when I put my head on them, and they began to tremble, and I began to tremble.”

— James M. Cain

“He was enthusiastic about everything, but when she came in with the pie he grew positively lyrical.”

— James M. Cain

“A smile is nature's freeway: it has lanes, and you can go any speed you like, except you can't go back”

— James M. Cain

“You usually can tell when a writer is going down hill by the size of his liquor bill.”