New York Blues Quotes

“He won’t hurt me,” she answers understandingly without taking her eyes from mine. “We used to be in love.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“And I say to my own thoughts dejectedly: Why weren’t you that clear, that all-seeing, the other night, that terrible other night. It might have done you more good then.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“There’s a catch phrase that you all must have heard at one time or another. You walk into a room or go over toward a group. Someone turns and says with huge emphasis: “There he is.” As though you were the most important one of all. (And you’re not.) As though you were the one they were just talking about. (And they weren’t.) As though you were the only one that mattered. (And you’re not.) It’s a nice little tribute, and it don’t cost anyone a cent.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“All guys are scared of each other, didn’t you know that? I’m not the only one. We’re all born afraid.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“And the radio tells me sarcastically to “Light up, you’ve got a good thing going.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“So much for the recreational side of night life in the upper-bracket-income hotels of Manhattan. And in its root-origins the very word itself is implicit with implication: re-create. Analyze it and you’ll see it also means to reproduce. But clever, ingenious Man has managed to sidetrack it into making life more livable.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“In the pin-drop silence a taxi comes up with an unaccompanied girl in it. I can tell it’s a taxi, I can tell it’s a girl, and I can tell she’s unaccompanied; I can tell all three just by her introductory remark.

“Benny,” she says. “Will you come over and pay this for me?”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“This is the deep of the night, the dregs, the sediment at the bottom of the coffee cup. The blue hours; when guys’ nerves get tauter and women’s fears get greater. Now guys and girls make love, or kill each other or sometimes both.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it’s a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson’s face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There’s a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Now the evening’s at its noon, its meridian. The outgoing tide has simmered down, and there’s a lull—like the calm in the eye of a hurricane—before the reverse tide starts to set in.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Life is for the living, not the already dead.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“It wasn’t an attack. We’d been together too many times before, made love together too many times before, for it to be that. It was just that fear had suddenly entered, and made us dangerous strangers. She turned and tried to run. I caught the scarf from behind. Only in supplication, in pleading; trying to hold on to the only one who could save me. And the closer I tried to draw her to me, the less she was alive. Until finally I got her all the way back to me, where I wanted her to be, and she was dead. I hadn’t wanted that. It was only love, turned inside out. It was only loneliness, outgoing. And now I’m alone, without any love.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“They were like two pools of fear. She saw something that I couldn’t see. And fear kindled in them. I feared and I mistrusted but I couldn’t bear to see my fear reflected in her eyes. From her I wanted reassurance, consolation; only wanted to draw her close to me and hold her to me, to lean my head against her and rest and draw new belief in myself. Instead she met my fear with her fear. Eyes that should have been tender were glowing with unscreaming fear.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“I can still see her eyes. They still come before me, wide and white and glistening with fright, out of the amnesiac darkness of our sudden, unpremeditated meeting.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“I think fear neutralizes alcohol, weakens its anesthetic power. It’s good for small fears; your boss, your wife, your bills, your dentist; all right then to take a drink. But for big ones it doesn’t do any good. Like water on blazing gasoline, it will only quicken and compound it. It takes sand, in the literal and the slang sense, to smother the bonfire that is fear. And if you’re out of sand, then you must burn up.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Somehow I can tell by the quick chip-chop of her feet away from my door that it’s not lost time she’s trying to make up; it’s the tears starting in her eyes that she wants to hide.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“I take a hundred-dollar bill out of the wallet on my hip. I fold the bill a few times so that the corner numerals disappear, then thrust it between two of her fingers.

She sees the “1” first as the bill slowly uncoils. Her face is politely appreciative.

She sees the first zero next—that makes it a ten. Her face is delighted, more than grateful.

She sees the last zero. Suddenly her face is fearful, stunned into stone; in her eyes I can see steel filings of mistrust glittering. Her wrist flexes to shove the bill back to me, but I ward it off with my hand upended.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“On her face the beauty of two races blends, each contributing its individual hallmark. The golden-warm skin, the deep glowing eyes, the narrow-tipped nose, the economical underlip.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Her name is Ginny. She told me last night. I asked her, that’s why she told me. I wanted to hear the sound of somebody’s name, that’s why I asked her. I was frightened and lonely, that’s why I wanted to hear the sound of somebody’s name.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Now there aren’t two paths anymore; there’s only one, only mine. Running downhill into the ground, running downhill into its doom.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Fear bred anxiety to justify. Anxiety to justify bred anger. The phone calls that wouldn’t be answered, the door rings that wouldn’t be opened. Anger bred sudden calamity.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“I turn my head a little. The radio’s caroling “Tonight,” velvety smooth and young and filled with plaintive desire. Maria’s song from West Side Story. I remember one beautiful night long ago at the Winter Garden, with a beautiful someone beside me. I tilt my nose and breathe in, and I can still smell her perfume, the ghost of her perfume from long ago.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“He says I’m not serious, I must be joking. He says he can’t take anything like that. He says all the things he’s expected to say, and I override them. Then, when he can’t come up with anything else, he comes up with, half-hopefully (hopeful for a yes answer): “You tired of them?”

“No,” I say quite simply, “no—they’re tired of me.”

He thanks me over and thanks me under and thanks me over again, and then he’s gone, and I’m glad he’s gone.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“There’s an innocuous explanation for everything. Everything is a coin that has two sides to it, and one side is innocuous but the other can be ominous.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“I’m posted behind a high-backed wing chair, with my wrists crossed over the top of it and my hands dangling like loose claws, staring a little tensely at the door. Then there’s the waiter’s characteristically deferential knock. But I say “Who is it?” anyway, before I go over to open it. He’s an elderly man. He’s been up here twice before, and by now I know the way he sounds. “Room service,” comes through in that high-pitched voice his old age has given him.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“New York. The world’s most dramatic city. Like a permanent short circuit, sputtering and sparking up into the night sky all night long. No place like it for living. And probably no place like it for dying.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues

“Across the way from me sits a little transistor radio, up on end, simmering away like a teakettle on a stove. It’s been going steadily ever since I first came in here, two days, three nights ago; it chisels away the stony silence, takes the edge off the being alone. It came with the room, not with me.”
― Cornell Woolrich, New York Blues