Noir Fiction Quotes

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

There are criminals everywhere these days, you know. One might end up missing the police! Who would have thought that possible?
The Maid
The Informer by Steen Langtrup ~ Steen Langstrup

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman's boat."

Johannes aka 'BB'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used series characters) or will be destroyed. This is why, despite his congenital pessimism, Woolrich manages any number of times to squeeze out an upbeat resolution. Precisely because we can never know whether a particular novel or story will be light or dark, allegre or noir, his work remains hauntingly suspenseful.
("Introduction") ~ Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Calvino remembered he had no food in the house and would have to go shopping on Sukhumvit Road. Then he planned to crawl into his bed and sleep, the kind of deep sleep without dreams or hopes, a sleep without regrets, without knowing or thinking how things got the way they are or how occasional fragments of decency escaped the forces of gravity. ~ Christopher G. Moore

The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.

("Introduction") ~ Francis M. Nevins Jr.

The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night-to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house. ~ Raymond Chandler

But what the hell, I thought as I lay there in the dark. It could be souls rot away with the body, too. What did anything matter in the long run anyway, except memories? And they only lived on in corpses that couldn't talk. ~ Will Viharo

I have saved no one but myself and now I watch for the other universe to unravel in my skull, for the sky to become my own skin and fill with stars. ~ Will Christopher Baer

I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction") ~ Francis M. Nevins Jr.

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 ~ Cornell Woolrich

What if the saboteurs come while he's standing there pissing on our truck?"
"Then he's in trouble."

Conversation between two Gestapo Officers
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth. ~ Cornell Woolrich

That was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity. ~ Lily Gardner

How the Hell is it we go to pick up Jenna Jameson and end up with the fucking chick from those Kill Bill movies? ~ Todd Morr

Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that. ~ James Ellroy

There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby. ~ Lily Gardner

The lady in the liquor store sold me a fifth of whiskey and the landlord's name without taking her eyes off the book she was reading. ~ Andrew Cotto

Life is swimming to shore with cowboy boots on. ~ Christopher G. Moore

You will have noticed that I didn't give this story a pat conclusion, and that's deliberate. Katherine (my wife and frequent coauthor, K. A. Applegate) and I were among the earliest authors to encounter fan fiction via the internet. We've embraced it from the start. And some part of me hopes that fanfic writers will carry this story forward. Don't ask me what happens to these characters next, because I don't know. Will Dekka find love, perhaps with Simone? Will Cruz and Armo? How will Sam and Astrid do in this terrifying extension of earlier trauma? Maybe you have some ideas. I built the sandbox; if you want to bring your pails and shovels and play in it, cool. It's one of the best things about writing for young people: you are my collaborators in imagination. If I leave blanks it's because I know you'll fill them. ~ Michael Grant

When everything is said and done, the only thing that really matters is the quality of the soul you build during the life you're given. ~ Kayt C. Peck

President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War II in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating Nazi concentration camp victims. Living in the film world, he apparently confused a movie he had seen with a reality he had not. On many occasions in his Presidential campaigns, Mr. Reagan told an epic story of World War II courage and sacrifice, an inspiration for all of us. Only it never happened; it was the plot of the movie A Wing and a Prayer - that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at age 9. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction. ~ Carl Sagan

Life is giving you another chance to plant your seeds. Take care of them by watering them, nurturing them throughout all seasons, and watch your flowers bloom."

~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

It feels like I was made to fit here, in the space beneath his heart. ~ Caroline Greyling

The real Julian Wells didn't die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

That's what we all were, wasn't it? Created beings who bore traces of their Creator, each with a different piece of his nature augmented in order to show the world who he was. ~ Joanna Davidson Politano

Thus and thus is the world. Seeing the depth, we shall see also the height, and praise both. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Myron, all six feet of super cuteness, comes forward. He smiles and I almost die, because he has one adorable dimple. Instead of getting embarrassed about his first name, he offers his hand and says, "Call me McDaniel. ~ Courtney Brandt

The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. ~ Anthony Burgess

The Cat: When the wine drinks itself, when the skull speaks, when the clock strikes the right time, only then will you find the tunnel that leads to the Red Bull. There be a trick to it, of course. ~ Peter S. Beagle

Charlie Huston, who showran the first season [of Powers], is a novelist, and likes to internalize fiction as a novelist does. ~ Brian Michael Bendis

I think to write fiction you have to have a powerful need/desire to connect. I can't. Wanting to and not being able to has lead to a lot of misery in my life. ~ Henry Rollins

Fireflies were like fairy tales. They appealed to the young, the old, and the imaginative. In a world of detestable insects, these bugs were the exception. They had an adorable way of flying so whimsically despite their butts being on fire. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

I'll find out who's inside. Wait here and keep alert!' Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building's eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn't see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol's cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man's eye ~ David Cook

I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. ~ Sandra Cisneros

A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be. ~ Heidi Julavits

To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It's forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there's a fair, a movie house, cotton candy. ~ Alexander Theroux

Science Fiction and Romance share the same DNA. At their very heart, they are about exploration and discovery. ~ Laurie A. Green

I feel like I am weak, and my weakness has been exposed to the light. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

I am always interested in characters who are in these kinds of transitional moments in their lives, when it's not clear where they're going to end up. It's interesting territory for fiction. ~ K.M. Soehnlein

She walked a ways down the concourse, and looked back and waved and then turned a corner and was out of sight. I still stood for a moment, looking at the last place I had seen her, being careful not to be routine, while I became the other guy again, the one I was without her. ~ Robert B. Parker

In other news, It's seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven't prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can't just pile them up outside. The next major storm would cause The Great Martian Potato Migration. ~ Andy Weir

While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding. ~ Geraldine Brooks

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping," he said, quietly this time. "He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

The more you write fiction, the deeper you will dig, until you begin to understand pieces of your own life. ~ Alice Blanchard

A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy's body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid, red hives, bloody scratches. His bloodshot eyes bulged, darting back and forth. ~ James Dashner

Ivy!' I stammered, then glared at Kisten. 'You told Ivy? Thanks a hell of a lot. Want to call my mom next? ~ Kim Harrison

A woman could do a lot of crazy things for a pair of fine-looking dimples. ~ Amy Andrews

A time will come in your life, William, where your faith will be tested ... and you must stay faithful to the word and vision that the All-Father has given to you. ~ M.J. Chrisman

Delayed gratification hints that something terrible is going to happen, and then delays the resolution.

It's that interval between the promise of something awful and it actually happening, where suspense resides. ~ Sandy Vaile

A microbe is more deadly than a minotaur ~ Marty Rubin

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds. ~ Alan Lightman

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised. ~ David Leavitt

Long ago she'd clamped an iron shell around her heart and nothing and no one could pry it lose, but deep inside the tender flesh still beat. ~ Sarah Sundin

Before long, everyone was giving him answers, and feeling a little superior, because it was really remarkable the number of things Chrestomanci seemed not to know. He had heard of Hitler, though he asked Brian to refresh his memory about him, but he had only the haziest notion about Gandhi or Einstein, and he had never heard of Walt Disney or reggae. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Fiction, when it's done right, does in the daylight what dreams do at night: we leave the confines of our own experiences and go to common ground, where for a time we are not alone. ~ Jincy Willett