James Marlowe > James's Quotes

“If you're going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly.”
― Mark E. Smith, Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

“They fail to realize that 99.9 per cent of people with a healthy diet will eventually die.”
― Mark E. Smith, Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

“We went to this stupid heavy metal disco after the first gig – which was awful – and the group all started dancing to Deep Purple. I told them to sit down, have some dignity.”
― Mark E. Smith, Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

“I’m annoyed by the lack of smoking on TV as well. It’s terrible. It’s funny seeing old interviewers lighting up, the likes of Russell Harty pulling on a Three Castles or a State Express or a Churchman Full Strength or a Passing Cloud. I think it’s a shame that we don’t get to see this any more. We should have more ashtrays on morning TV and presenters wheezing.”
― Mark E. Smith, Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

“Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed wire handle.”
― Jim Thompson

“A weed is a plant out of place.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.”
― Jim Thompson

“If we all had what we wanted to eat... We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“Yeah, Johnnie,’ I said, ‘it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way. And I’ll tell you why. Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it. They can’t see that things are screwed up, so they’re not worried about it. What they’re worried about is guys like you.

‘They’re worried about guys liking a drink and taking it. Guys getting a piece of tail without paying a preacher for it. Guys who know what makes ’em feel good, and aren’t going to be talked out of the motion … They don’t like you guys, and they crack down on you. And the way it looks to me they’re going to be cracking down harder and harder as time goes on. You ask me why I stick around, knowing the score, and it’s hard to explain. I guess I king of got a foot on both fences, Johnnie. I planted ’em there early and now they’ve taken root, and I can’t move either way and I can’t jump. All I can do is wait until I split. Right down the middle.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“​"Sure there's a hell..." I could hear him saying it now, now, as I lay here on bed with her breath in my face, and her body squashed against me... "It is the drab desert where the sun sheds neither warmth nor light and Habit force-feeds senile Desire. It is the place here mortal Want dwells with immortal Necessity, and the night becomes hideous with the groans of one and the ecstatic shrieks of the other. Yes, there is a hell, my boy, and you do not have to dig for it.”
― Jim Thompson, Savage Night

“I finished the ale, started to order a third one, and decided against it. I'd had enough. More than enough. Or I never would have. You take just so much from a bottle, and then you stop taking. From then on you're putting.”
― Jim Thompson, Savage Night

“You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“But you could,” Ken said. “You could. We got a fella over in the jail right now for pleasurin’ a pig.” “Well, I’ll be dogged,” I said, because I’d heard of things like that but I never had known of no actual cases. “What kind of charges you makin’ against him?” Buck said maybe they could charge him with rape. Ken gave him a kind of blank look and said no, they might not be able to make that kind of charge stick. “After all, he might claim he had the pig’s consent, and then where would we be?”
― Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280

“If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we’ve got the least excuse for it.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“I figure sometimes that maybe that's why we don't make as much progress as other parts of the nation. People lose so much time from their jobs in lynching other people, and they spend so much money on rope and kerosene and getting likkered-up in advance and other essentials, that there ain't an awful lot of money or man-hours left for practical purposes.”
― Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280

“You don't need proof, know what I mean? Not from what I've seen of the law in operation. All you need is a tip that a guy is guilty. From then on, unless he's a big shot, it's just a matter of making him admit it.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“that crutch hadn’t done her rear end any harm. If you saw it by itself, you might have thought it belonged to a Shetland pony. But”
― Jim Thompson, Savage Night

“Couples choose each other with an unerring instinct for finding the very person who will exactly match their own level of unconscious anxieties and mirror their own dysfunctions, and who will trigger for them all their unresolved emotional pain.”
― Gabor Maté, Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It