Marihuana Quotes

“There was no time to weigh chances. There was no such thing as chances anyway, in the distorted perspective of the weed fumes.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“There were three of them in the room now, where only two had first come in. Death was in the room with the two of them.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“Evans turned away, did something with his left eyelid for the benefit of the other two. "It's got him," he smirked. "He's tuned-in from now on."

Time started to slow up and act crazy. Minutes took much longer to pass than they had before. It was hard for him to adjust himself to the new ratio, he got all balled-up. When it seemed like half an hour had gone by, the radio would still be playing only the first chorus of the same selection that had begun a good thirty minutes before. Otherwise, nothing much happened. Vinnie was doing a good deal of muffled giggling over there on the divan. The stranger who had been sitting reading the paper got up, yawned, stretched ponderously, and strolled out into the hall, with a muttered "Happy landing!" by way of leave-taking. He didn't come back again any more.

Turner looked down one time and a quarter of an inch of charred paper was all that was left between his fingers. Then the next time he looked there was a full length cigarette again.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“His fear-inflamed mind sent the control-signal to his finger-joint to fold back. The trigger sliced back. The blast seemed to lift the booth clear off the floor, drop it down again. A pin-wheel of vacancy appeared in the glass, flinging off shards and slivers.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“The remaining chain swung down, he wrenched the door out and he was free. The last thing he heard behind him was the oncoming stomp of running feet.

Now began flight, that excruciating accompaniment to both the sleep-dream and the drug-dream as well. Down endless flights of stairs that seemed to have increased decimally since he had come up them so many days before. Four, fourteen, forty - there seemed no end to them, no bottom. Round and round he went, hand slapping at the worn guard-rail only at the turns to keep from bulleting head-on into the wall each time. The clamor had come out onto a landing high above him now, endless miles above him; a thin voice came shouting down the stair-well, "There he is! See him down there?" raising the hue and cry to the rest of the pack. Footsteps started cannonading down after him, like avenging thunder from on high. They only added wings to his effortless, almost cascading waterlike flight.

Like a drunk, he was incapable of hurting himself. At one turning he went off his feet and rippled down the whole succeeding flight of stair-ribs like a wriggling snake. Then he got up again and plunged ahead, without consciousness of pain or smart. The whole staircase-structure seemed to hitch crazily from side to side with the velocity of his descent, but it was really he that was hitching. But behind him the oncoming thunder kept gaining.

Then suddenly, after they'd kept on for hours, the stairs suddenly ended, he'd reached bottom at last. He tore out through a square of blackness at the end of the entrance-hall, and the kindly night received him, took him to itself - along with countless other things that stalk and kill and are dangerous if crossed.

He had no knowledge of where he was; if he'd ever had, he'd lost it long ago. The drums of pursuit were still beating a rolling tattoo inside the tenement. He chose a direction at random, fled down the deserted street, the wand of light from a wan street-lamp flicking him in passing, so fast did he scurry by beneath it.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“She was the kind of shopkeeper who finishes the paragraph she is reading before waiting on the customer.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“One of the two owners, the man who had been sitting in the front room, was stretched out in there asleep, stockinged-toes pointed at the ceiling, one hand backed defensively against his eyes to ward off the light. He'd taken off his vest and shoes, and that strap that wasn't straight enough to be a suspender-strap was dangling now around one of the knobs at the foot of the bed. It ended in a holster, with a black, cross-grained slab of metal protruding from it. Turner couldn't take his eyes off it, while the long seconds that to him were minutes toiled by.

That meant out, that black slab, more surely than any door. He had to have it. More than that, it meant a continuance of out, for so long as he had it. And he wanted out with all the desperate longing of all trapped things, blindly scratching, clawing their way through a maze to the open. To the open where the equal chance is.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“Evans made himself their spokesman. "Charlie and Joe," he offered. "Remember us? We brought a friend back with us this time." Girls evidently didn't count in this little subdivision of the underworld; a miscalculation many a shady character has made.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“The key to memory had been a simple one after all; simple but effective. An unguarded telephone directory, this time hanging on the wall, almost at the entrance of a long, narrow, all-night lunchroom, with a dozing vagrant or two nodding in the one-armed chairs and no employee any nearer than the counter far at the back.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“The key to memory had been a simple one after all; simple but effective. An unguarded telephone directory, this time hanging on the wall, almost at the entrance of a long, narrow, all-night lunchroom, with a dozing vagrant or
two nodding in the one-armed chairs and no employee any nearer than the counter far at the back.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“She came this time without the help of music. She was never very far removed from his thoughts. Eleanor. She was golden letters lighting up the frightened darkness of his mind. She was rain on the desert, she was sunshine in the dark. She’d help him; she’d hide him, or help him to get away. She was the only one he could trust, in all the world. She’d once loved him. All that love couldn’t be completely gone, there must be a little of it left.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“Now began flight, that excruciating accompaniment to both the sleep-dream
and the drug-dream as well. Down endless flights of stairs that seemed to have increased decimally since he had come up them so many
days before. Four, fourteen, forty—there seemed no end to them, no bottom. Round and round he went, hand slapping at the worn guard-rail only at the turns to keep from bulleting head-on into the wall each time. The clamor had come out onto a landing high above him now, endless miles above him; a thin voice came shouting down the stair-well, “There he is! See him down there?” raising the hue and cry to the rest of the pack. Footsteps started
cannonading down after him, like avenging thunder from on high. They only added wings to his effortless, almost cascading waterlike flight.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“The way they made themselves at home they might have been, as Evans had suggested, just company dropping in for a friendly visit. Except that they kept their hats and coats on, as if finding it advisable to be ready to leave in a hurry if they had to.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“Aw, don’t be yellow,” Gordon snarled. Turner could see by their expressions that they didn’t really like him, there was no real friendship there; they wanted him to come along simply to have a good time at his expense, to make him the butt of a joke, laugh at his inexperience.
They looked at him scornfully, and the girl said contemptuously, “Oh, lethim go. Don’t make him come up if he’s afraid.”
It was the sort of challenge that usually works, against all reason and logic, with almost anyone. It did this time too. Turner turned toward the tenement entrance without another word, followed them in. If the girl’s elbow nudged Evans’ ribs in the gloom ahead, he failed to see it.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana

“Turner opened the door and just looked at them when he saw who it was. He didn’t say “Come in” or anything. He didn’t have to with them. They parted in the middle, the girl and Evans pushed past on one side of him, Gordon on the other, and all of a sudden his apartment was full of noise. The radio was going at three-quarters tone, the girl named Vinnie was
experimenting with a cocktail-shaker that played a tune, and Evans was busily slapping the lids of boxes up and down looking for a cigarette. This came under the general heading of camaraderie. Turner had experienced a
lot of it since his wife had left him and he’d been living alone. As long as the fort had already been taken over, he went ahead and closed the door; but with a rueful look, as if he would rather have done it while they were still
out there in front of him.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Marihuana