They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Quotes

“there is no new experience in life. something may happen to you that you think has never happened before, that you think is brand new, but you are mistaken. you have only to see or smell or hear or feel a certain something and you will discover that this experience you thought was new has happened before.”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

“It's peculiar to me,' she said, 'that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me - who want to die but haven't got the guts -”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

“Let’s go sit and hate a bunch of people.”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

“Isn’t there something I can talk about that won’t remind you that you wish you were dead?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said.”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

“This was one day Gloria had no reason to be morbid, but she was more morbid than ever.”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

“Customers at a marathon do not have to be prepared for their excitement. When anything happens they get excited all at once. In that respect a marathon dance is like a bullfight.”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

“What could I say? … All those people knew I had killed her; the only other person who could have helped me at all was dead too. So I just stood there, looking at the judge and shaking my head. I didn’t have a leg to stand on. ‘Ask the mercy of the court,’ said Epstein, the lawyer they had assigned to defend me. ‘What was that?’ the judge said. ‘Your Honour,’ Epstein said, ‘ – we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. This boy admits killing the girl, but he was only doing her a personal favour –”
― Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?