Jim Thompson Quotes

What I was thinking was that she must have buggers in her bloomers or a chigger on her figger, or however you say it. It looked to me like something had better be done about it pretty quick, or her pants would start blazing and maybe they'd set the fairgrounds on fire and there'd be a panic with thousands of people getting stomped to death, not to mention the property damage. And I couldn't think of but one way to prevent it. ~ Jim Thompson

It doesn't matter what answers you get if you ask the wrong questions. ~ Jim Thompson

If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O. ~ Eoin Colfer

I just learned two things there at that college, Mr. Ford, that was ever of any use to me. One was that I couldn't do any worse than the people that were in the saddle, so maybe I'd better try pulling 'em down and riding myself. The other was a definition I got out of the agronomy book, and I reckon it was even more important than the first. It did more to revise my thinking, if I'd really done any thinking up until that time. Before that I'd seen everything in black and white, good and bad. But after I was set straight I saw that the name you put to a thing depended on where you stood and where it stood. And…and here's the definition, right out of the agronomy books: 'A weed is a plant out of place.' Let me repeat that. 'A weed is a plant out of place.' I find a hollyhock in my cornfield, and it's a weed. I find it in my yard, and it's a flower. ~ Jim Thompson

He'd seen this babe before
her many counterparts, that is. He knew her kin, distant and near. All her mamas, sisters, aunts, cousins and what have you. And he knew the name was Lowdown with a capital L. He wasn't at all surprised to find her in a setup like this. Not after encountering her as a warden's sister-in-law, the assistant treasurer of a country bank, and a supervisor of paroles. This babe got around. She was the original square-plug-in-a-round-hole kid. But she never changed any. She had that good old Lowdown blood in her, and the right guy could bring it out. ~ Jim Thompson

killer inside me ~ Jim Thompson

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

When life attains a crisis, man's focus narrows. [ ... ] The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion. ~ Jim Thompson

Well, anyway, by the time it got ready to vote, it looked like a fella wouldn't be able to have no fun at all anymore, if my opponents were elected. About all a fella would be able to do, without getting arrested, was to drink sody-pop and maybe kiss his wife. And no one liked the idea very much, the wives included. ~ Jim Thompson

It's - it's always lightest j-just before the dark. ~ Jim Thompson

I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway. ~ Jim Thompson

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books. ~ Jo Nesbo

I knew–though I didn't recognize the fact–that I wasn't all right. ~ Jim Thompson

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

Maybe it don't seem to make sense for a fella to be doing things for a reason that he don't know about. But I reckon I've been doing it most of my life. ~ Jim Thompson

In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He'll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can't figure out whether the hero's laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff - a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I'm not lazy, whatever else I am. I'll tell you everything. ~ Jim Thompson

Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow. ~ Jim Thompson

What smells good in the store may stink in the stewpot. ~ Jim Thompson

Flight is many things. Something clean and swift, like a bird skimming across the sky. Or something filthy and crawling; a series of crablike movements through figurative and literal slime, a process of creeping ahead, jumping sideways, running backward.
It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads, spur railroad lines, the tailgate of a wildcat truck, a stolen car and a dead couple in lovers' lane. It is food pilfered from freight cars, garments taken from clotheslines; robbery and murder, sweat and blood. The complex made simple by the alchemy of necessity ~ Jim Thompson

You've got forever; and somehow you can't do much with it. You've got forever; and it's a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators. ~ Jim Thompson

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

The land, now, well I'll tell you how I feel about that. It's done a good job, as good as it was able to, anyway, and it's got a right to look tired. It'd be pretty upsetting if it looked any other way. Yes, and the hardness is all right, too. It's been through something pretty hard, and some of that hardness was bound to rub off. And sometimes a frown sets a lot better with you than a smile. Something that's taken a beating, you don't want to see it laugh. And just because it's stopped laughing doesn't mean it'll never laugh again. ~ Jim Thompson

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

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 phone rang. Softly, in actuality, yet it seemed loud and ominous, as phones do at night in dark hotel rooms. ~ Jim Thompson

​"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

Practically every fella that breaks the law has a danged good reason, to his own way of thinking, which makes every case exceptional, not just one or two. Take you, for example. ~ Jim Thompson

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

There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living. ~ Jim Thompson

The world was a shitpot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it. ~ Jim Thompson

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

Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught. ~ Val Kilmer

He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true. ~ Jim Thompson

If I wasn't a decent woman I'd heist a leg and pee in your ear until it washed out that stinking pile of crap you call brains. ~ Jim Thompson

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

I ain't saying you're a liar, because that wouldn't be polite. But I'll tell you this, ma'am. If I loved liars, I'd hug you to death. ~ Jim Thompson

People looking for easy answers to big problems. People that blame the Jews or colored folks for all the bad things that happen to 'em. People that can't realize that a heck of a lot of things are bound to go wrong in a world as big as this one. And if there is any answer to why it's that way – and there ain't always – why, it's probably not just one answer by itself, but thousands of answers.

But that's the way my daddy was – like those people. They buy some books by a fella that don't know a god-danged thing more than they do (or he wouldn't be having to write books). And that's supposed to set 'em straight about everything. Or they buy themselves a bottle of pills. Or they say the whole trouble is with other folks, and the only thing to do is to get rid of 'em. Or they claim we got to war with another country. ~ Jim Thompson

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living?
You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he's nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn't have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy…

You've got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You've got it. You're young, I guess: you'd call thirty young, and you're strong. You don't have much education, but you've got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you've had to do with this is as far you've got And something tellys you, you're not going much farther if any.

And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can't stop hoping. You can't stop wondering…

…Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn't see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something tha ~ Jim Thompson

Well. Well?
What are you going to do? What are you going to say?
What are you going to say when you're drowning in your own dung and they keep booting you back into it, when all the screams in hell wouldn't be as loud as you want to scream, when you're at the bottom of the pit and the whole world's at the top, when it has but one face, a face without eyes or ears, and yet it watches and listens ... .
What are you going to do and say? Why, pardner, that's simple. It's easy as nailing your balls to a stump and falling off backwards. Snow again, pardner, and drift me hard, because that's an easy one.
You're gonna say, they can't keep a good man down. You're gonna say, a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. You're gonna smile, boy, you're gonna show 'em the ol' fightin' smile. And then you're gonna get out there an' hit 'em hard and fast and low, an' - an' Fight! ~ Jim Thompson

You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off. ~ Jim Thompson

You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore. ~ Jim Thompson

It had soaked in on him at last, the spot he was in. Soaked clear through a quart of booze until it hit him where he lived and rubbed the place raw. ~ Jim Thompson

That's what she keeps you around for, to diddle her fiddle. Because you're low-hung and she's high-strung! ~ Jim Thompson

Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under or over-protectiveness, in a distrust in parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity - a flexible concept - be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first. ~ Jim Thompson

But even the innocent blow of a child can be painful, possibly more so than that of an adult since its victim cannot bring himself to strike back. His only recourse, when the pain becomes unbearable, is to put himself beyond the child's reach. ~ Jim Thompson

I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn't anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops ... Every goddamned restaurant I go to, it's always the same way ... They'll have some old bag on the payroll - I figure they keep her locked up in the mop closet until they see me coming. And they'll doll her up in the dirtiest goddamned apron they can find and smear that crappy red polish all over her fingernails, and everything about her is smeary and sloppy and smelly. And she's the dame that always waits on me. ~ Jim Thompson

It looked like I'd sold my pottage for a mess of afterbirth, as the saying is. I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped on. ~ Jim Thompson

Usually, during the past fifteen-odd years, I'd hated to see the morning come. That's a psychotic symptom, you know, not wanting to awaken
hating to face things that are bound to be more than you can handle. ~ Jim Thompson

Clinton sighed, and gave up. All his life he had given up. He didn't know why it was like that; why a man who wanted nothing but to live honestly and industriously and usefully - who, briefly, asked only the privileges of giving and helping - had had to compromise and surrender at every turn. But that was the way it had been, and that apparently was the way it was to be. ~ Jim Thompson

I got a pole and fishing line from under my bed. I came back out of the bedroom and called to Myra, asking her if she could pack me up a lunch because I was going fishing. And I guess you know what she told me. So I left. There weren't many people on the street that late at night, almost nine o'clock, but practically everybody that was up asked me if I was going fishing. I said, why, no, I wasn't, and where did they ever get an idea like that? "Well, how come you're carryin' a fish pole and line, then?" this one fella said. "How come you're doin' that if you ain't goin' fishin'." "Oh, I got that to scratch my butt with," I said. "Just in case I'm up a tree somewheres, an' I can't reach myself from the ground." "But, looky here now - " He hesitated, frowning. "That don't make no sense. ~ Jim Thompson

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

It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I'd pinch myself, figuratively speaking - I had to keep pinching myself. Then I'd wake up kind of in reverse; I'd go back to the nightmare I had to live in. And everything would be clear and reasonable. ~ Jim Thompson

What else is there to do but laugh and joke ... how else can you bear up under the unbearable? ~ Jim Thompson

I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped. ~ Jim Thompson

We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard. ~ Jim Thompson

A heck of a lot of things are bound to go wrong in a world as big as this one. And if there's an answer to why it's that way - and there ain't always - why, it's probably not just one answer by itself, but thousands of answers. ~ Jim Thompson

Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted deserved what he got. ~ Jim Thompson

He could be breaking apart inside and you'd never know it from the way he acted. He'd be just as pleasant and polite as if he didn't have a care in the world. You had to be careful with someone like that. You could never know what he was thinking. ~ Jim Thompson

I found out long ago that the place where the law is apt to be abused the most is right around a courthouse. ~ Jim Thompson

If we all had what we wanted to eat ... We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. ~ Jim Thompson

He was thinking that the cities, perhaps, needed to look into the future even more than the country did. They should look ahead for forty, eighty, one hundred and sixty years, to a strong and healthy plain of population - or to an overworked, weakened, underfed, and infertile desert. ~ Jim Thompson

She wasn't much over five feet and a hundred pounds, and she looked a little scrawny around the neck and ankles. But that was all right. It was perfectly all right. The good Lord had known just where to put that flesh where it would really do some good. ~ Jim Thompson

Existence and proof are inseparables. You have to have the second to have the first. I ~ Jim Thompson

There is only one plot - things are not what they seem. ~ Jim Thompson

Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints. ~ Jim Harrison

And it was all your fault, Harry. ~ Jim Butcher

Pity the man who inherits a million and isn't a millionaire. Here's what would be pitiful, if your income grew and you didn't. ~ Jim Rohn

I do what I do, and I do it well, and focus and take it one moment at a time. ~ Jim Caviezel

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I think the officials and NFL owners are playing to the type of game that people want to see. ~ Jim Otto

I'm ready. No matter what's ahead for us. I'm ready to go down any road with you. Go through any door. I know that now, more than I ever did. ~ Jim Clancy

Logic said that at some point he must've been a baby and then a child, but looking at him one was almost convinced that some deity had touched the ground with its scepter and proclaimed, "There shall be a badass," and Jim had sprung into existence, fully formed, complete with clothes, and ready for ~ Ilona Andrews

I played music practically my entire life. But the first time I ever really played music was with John and Robby and Jim That's where it happened. it was an epiphany, a moment of profound clarity ~ Ray Manzarek

I always have been introspective, since I was a little kid, since I could remember, I was sitting in a closet trying to write out the meaning of the universe. That's been my whole life. ~ Jim Carrey

Large portions of the productivity gains from agile methods come not from doing things better, but from not doing them at all. ~ Jim Highsmith

One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code. ~ Ken Thompson

I'm serious, Jim. You need to put this crap away. You walk into school on Monday talking to me, or anyone else, about the city's pesky troll problem, and you're not exactly going to get a lot of people saying, 'Gee, thanks for the warning.' It'll spread faster than mono. You think things are tough for us now? Jim, this will be the end. I'm sorry if you had a crazy nightmare. I really am. But I can't let you ruin our lives. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I do just want to do jokes. I don't want to be a divisive figure. ~ Jim Gaffigan

The amount of time we give to something indicates it's importance to us. ~ Jim George

Simple is good." - Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets ~ Montgomery J. Granger

The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where. ~ Dorothy Thompson

A smile fought its way through her expression of pain for a moment, and she said, "Yeah, it really kind of was, wasn't it? Was that a Salamander?" "Pretty sure," I said. "They're so much bigger than in those Xanth books. ~ Jim Butcher

Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

Listen, God is not some little genie or a vending machine.
And is not just worth it because he makes your life all better, but He's with you.
God wants so much more for your life than fine ~ Jim Britts

NCLB should be called "More Children Left behind". ~ Jim DeMint

Stories are powerful because they speak to both our reason and to our emotion. ~ Jim Korkis

I am a guy who talks about bacon and escalators. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Attitude drives actions. Actions drive results. Results drive lifestyles. That's a quote from America's business philosopher, Jim Rohn. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer

There are a lot of good looking men on this planet. It seems like once a week someone will tell me, "I know someone who looks like you" and I don't know what say to them except, "Tell them hi." ~ Jim Gaffigan

Don't see the mind for more than it is, but don't misread it for all that it can be. ~ Jim Rohn

I'm a very sensitive person. I do like to be respected. I'm very loyal. I like it to be a two-way street. ~ Jim Brown

Life is unfair, uncaring, and painful, ~ Jim Butcher

The civil rights movement is evolving from a protest movement into a full-fledged social movement--an evolution calling its very name into question. It is now concerned not merely with removing the barriers to full opportunity but with achieving the fact of equality. From sit-ins and Freedom Rides we have gone into rent strikes, boycotts, community organization, and political action. As a consequence of this natural evolution, the Negro today finds himself stymied by obstacles of far greater magnitude than the legal barriers he was attacking before: automation, urban decay, de facto school segregation. These are problems which, while conditioned by Jim Crow, do not vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply rooted in our socioeconomic order; they are the result of the total society's failure to meet not only the Negro's needs but human needs generally. ~ Bayard Rustin

Aaaaaaaagh! I screamed, emerging from the wards and onto Murphy's front lawn, chock-full of new insight as to why ghosts are always moaning or wailing when they come popping out of somebody's wall or floor. Not much mystery there - it freaking hurts. ~ Jim Butcher

If you shoot, I will kill her before I die."
Yes," Kitai said in a patient tone. "Which is why I have not shot you. Yet. ~ Jim Butcher

I have a passion for words. I love words. And I'm just learning and developing my skills for words. I do books and I do journalism and plays. I have a broad palette. I don't have a great eye for direction. I love working with actors and I work very well with them because I appreciate what they bring to the table. I'd never say never, of course, but I look at it and don't really fancy it. I want to try and master the word side of it first. ~ Geoff Thompson

I can't imagine being a woman in the world of acting, like where you age starts to weigh you down - you go from being attractive to where they [directors] decided you're out ... I feel like with stand-up comedy, it doesn't matter if I've gotten fatter. ~ Jim Jefferies

She gave me a hard look. "No one likes a wiseass, Harry."
"Are you kidding? As long as the wiseass is talking to someone else, people love 'em. ~ Jim Butcher

Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me. ~ Jim Carrey