The Grifters Quotes

“Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevski’s conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted deserved what he got.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“He picked her up and tossed her on the bed.

They had a hell of a time.

But afterward, after she had gone back to her own room, depression came to him and what had seemed like such a hell of a time became distasteful, even a little disgusting. It was the depression of surfeit, the tail of selfindulgence’s kit. You flew high, wide, and handsome, imposing on the breeze that might have wafted you along indefinitely; and then it was gone, and down, down, down you went.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“He was his own victim, his own slave. He had made personality a profession, created a career out of selling himself. And he could not stray far, or for long, from his self-made self.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“As for working with a partner, he didn’t like that either. It cut the score right down the middle. It put an apple on your head, and handed the other guy a shotgun. Because grifters, it seemed, suffered an irresistible urge to beat their colleagues. There was little glory in whipping a fool—hell, fools were made to be whipped. But to take a professional, even if it cost you in the long run, ah, that was something to polish your pride.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“How to make her run? No problem there. For a fearful shadow lies constantly over the residents of Uneasy Street. It casts itself through the ostensibly friendly handshake, or the gorgeously wrapped package. It beams out from the baby's carriage, the barber's chair, the beauty parlor. Every neighbor is suspect, every outsider, every period; even one's own husband or wife of sweetheart. There is no ease on Uneasy Street. The longer one's tenancy, the more untenable it becomes.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“Wildly, he declared that she was a whore at heart, that she had always been a whore, that she had been one when he met her.

That was not true. In her early working life, as a photographer's model and cocktail waitress, she had occasionally given herself to men and received gifts in return. But it wasn't the same as whoring. She had liked the men involved. What she gave them was given freely, without bargaining, as were their gifts to her.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“There was too much of a sameness about the evening’s delights. He had been the same route too many times. He’d been there before, so double-damned often, and however you traveled—backward, forward, or walking on your hands—you always got to the same place. You got nowhere, in other words, and each trip took a little more out of you.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“He was part of this river of cars, aiding its sluggish tide and in turn aided by it. Without losing his identity, free to turn out of the tide when he chose, he still belonged to something.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“That was the way one had to do. To do the best one could, and accept things as they were. Usually, they did not seem so bad after a while; if they were not actually good, then they became so by virtue of the many things that were worse. Almost everything was relatively good. Eating was better than starving, living better than dying,”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters

“he thought with non-bitterness that fear was the worst part of being old. The anxiety born of fear. A fella knew that he wasn’t much good any more—oh, yes, he knew it. And he knew he didn’t always talk too bright, and he couldn’t really look nice no matter how hard he tried. So, knowing in his heart that it was impossible to please anyone, he struggled valiantly to please everyone. And thus he made mistakes, one after the other. Until, finally, he could no more bear himself than other people could bear him. And he died.”
― Jim Thompson, The Grifters