Thin Man Quotes

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins. ~ Edmund Crispin

Another woman catches sight of Fischerle's hump on the ground and runs screaming into the street: 'Murder! Murder!' She takes the hump for a corpse. Further details - she knows none. The murderer is very thin, a poor sap, how he came to do it, you shouldn't have thought it of him. Shot may be, someone suggests. Of course, everyone heard the shot. Three streets off, the shot had been heard. Not a bit of it, that was a motor tyre. No, it was a shot! The crowd won't be done out of its shot. A threatening attitude is assumed towards the doubters. Don't let him go. An accessory. Trying to confuse the trail! Out of the building comes more news. The woman's statements are revised. The thin man has been murdered. And the corpse on the floor? It's alive. It's the murderer, he had hidden himself. He was tring to creep away between the corpse's legs when he was caught. The more recent information is more detailed. The little man is a dwarf. What do you expect, a cripple! The blow was actually struck by another. A redheaded man. Ah, those redheads. The dwarf put him up to it. Lynch him! The woman gave the alarm. Cheers for the woman! She screamed and screamed. A Woman! Doesn't know what fear is. The murderer had threatened her. The redhead. It's always the Reds. He tore her collar off. No shooting. Of course not. What did he say? Someone must have invented the shot. The dwarf. Where is he? Inside. Rush the doors! No one else can get in. It's full up. What a murder! The woman had a platef ~ Elias Canetti

A thin man can squeeze into a fat body, yet you can only squeeze a fat man to become thin ~ Benny Bellamacina

It was a stick-figure drawing. Two people holding hands. A thin man in black and a girl, half his height with short hair, and wide eyes. The stick-girl's head was cocked slightly, and a small red spot marked her arm. Three similar spots, no bigger than periods, dotted the stick-man's chest. The stick-man's mouth was nothing more than a faint grim line.

Beneath the drawing ran a single sentence: I made a friend. ~ Victoria Schwab

Before judging a thin man, one must get some information. Perhaps he was once fat. ~ Fernand Point

That man," Carol said. "The thin man at Gordon's will reading, with the ridiculous name. He's involved in this, isn't he?"
"Skulduggery Pleasant," Valkyrie nodded. "And yes, he is. ~ Derek Landy

Ah, Brynn," Vercleese boomed at one tall, extremely thin man with a dreamy air about him and a face dusted with fine white flour. "How's the bread business?" The man pulled himself from whatever reverie gripped him and smiled wanly. "Rising, Sir Vercleese, always rising." Vercleese ~ Douglas W. Clark

He didn't want to be
this thin man whose desires
were barely covered by skin,

standing absolutely still.
But everytime he moved
there was another place to go,

and everytime sadness would arrive
with its wonderful cocoon
not even that would last. ~ Stephen Dunn

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out. ~ Cyril Connolly

and Ross was limping by the end of it. He rode a horse longer than he walked these days. Then it was an asking and a questing, a seeking among dark and sprawling figures, the thumb jerked, the finger pointed. Ross's escort moved like a small Scottish ferret from group to group. At last a man sat up and said: 'Yes, I'm Poldark. Who wants me?' 'One of your own blood,' said Ross. 'Who else?' There was a startled oath, and a thin man scrambled to his feet. He had been lying, his back propped against a tree, his scabbard across his knees. He peered in the uncertain starlight. 'By the Lord God! It's Uncle Ross!' 'Geoffrey Charles! I never ~ Winston Graham

The thin man had a tight voice that expected to be lied to. (The King in Yellow) ~ Raymond Chandler

That world seemed to have vanished, but for a long
time the image I had of my father, which I still preserve today, was that of a thin man wearing an old suit that was too large for him and a secondhand hat he had bought on Calle Condal for seven pesetas, a man who could not afford to buy his son a wretched pen that was useless but seemed to mean everything to him. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Sir Edward Grey was a thin man with a face like a skull. He disliked foreigners and almost never traveled abroad: in British eyes, that made him the perfect foreign secretary. "Thank ~ Ken Follett

The Thin Man was a good break, because it was highly popular. I played a gigolo in it. ~ Cesar Romero

You see, to tall men I'm a midget, and to short men I'm a giant; to the skinny ones I'm a fat man, and to the fat ones I'm a thin man. ~ Norton Juster

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less. ~ Bertrand Russell

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside ... there's a thin man inside every fat man. ~ George Orwell

That image of Joan of Arc burning up in a fire burned inside me like a new religion. Her face skyward. Her faith muscled up like a holy war. And always the voice of a father in her head. Like me. Jesus. What is a thin man pinned to wood next to the image of a burning woman warrior ablaze? I took the image of a burning woman into my heart and left belief to the house of father forever. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

The healthy man is the thin man. But you don't need to go hungry for it: Remove the flours, starches and sugars; that's all. ~ Samael Aun Weor

We had a good marriage," he said. "I just thought it would be so much longer." Then he shrugged, and coughed away a sob, this thin man in his sixties with the soft androgynous face that aging seemed to bring, as though all the hormones were finally mixed up in a big coed pot because it just didn't matter anymore. ~ Meg Wolitzer

Mr. Tagomi turned to a passer-by, a thin man in rumpled suit. "What is that?" he demanded, pointing. The man grinned. "Awful, ain't it? That's the Embarcadero Freeway. A lot of people think it stinks up the view. ~ Philip K. Dick

And the pen, as it were, Dear Reader, is now in my hand, and I am claiming the advantage, taking it for myself, for you will notice that the written word hides the body of the one who writes. For all you know, I might be a MAN in disguise. Unlikely, you say, with all this feminist prattle flying out here and there and everywhere, but can you be sure? ~ Siri Hustvedt

Do not give your attention to what others do or fail to do; give it to what you do or fail to do. ~ Gautama Buddha

Always strive to be a better person. No matter what. Do not try to be better than your fellow man but to be better than you were yesterday. Compare yourself only to your past you. Any bit of progress that you make of improving yourself, no matter how small, makes a positive impact in your life and in the lives of others around you. A little bit every day. Try. ~ Avina Celeste

No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work. ~ Mark Twain

A real man is one who remembers the lady's birthday, but never knows how old she is. A man who never remembers her birthday, but knows exactly how old she is, - is her husband. ~ Faina Ranevskaya

A dead black man - nothing to bother about. ~ Henning Mankell

Man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself. ~ P.D. Ouspensky

This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

You can read minds, and you didn't tell me?" Link stared at me like he just found out I was the Silver Surfer. He rubbed his head nervously. "Hey, man, all that stuff about Lena? I was yankin' your chain." He looked away. "Are you doin' it now? You're doin' it, aren't you? Dude, get out of my head." He backed away from me and into the bookshelf.
"I can't read your mind, you idiot. ~ Kami Garcia

In my mind's eye I can still see the first night flight I made in Argentina. It was pitch-dark. Yet in the black void, I could see the lights of man shining down below on the plains, like faintly luminous earthbound stars. Each star was a beacon signaling the presence of a human mind. Here a man was meditating on human happiness, perhaps, or on justice or peace. Lost among this flock of stars was the star of some solitary shepherd. There, perhaps, a man was in communication with the heavens, as he labored over his calculations of the nebula of Andromeda. And there, a pair of lovers. These fires were burning all over the countryside, and each of them, aven the most humble, had to be fed. The fire of the poet, of the teacher, of the carpenter. But among all these living fires, how many closed windows there were, how many dead stars, fires that gave off no light for lack of nourishment. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

There is nothing so inconvenient in this world as an absolutely truthful person, who can both speak and write, and has the courage of his convictions. One can always arrange matters with liars ... But with the man or woman who holds truth dearer than life, and honor more valuable than advancement, there is nothing to be done, now that governments cannot insist on the hemlock-cure, as in the case of Socrates. ~ Marie Corelli

On occasions the person may appear ill-mannered; for example, one young man with Asperger's Syndrome wanted to attract his mother;s attention while she was talking to a group of her friends, and loudly said, 'Hey, you!', apparently unaware of the more appropriate means of addressing his mother in public. The child, being impulsive and not aware of the consequences, says the first thing that comes into their mind. Strangers may consider the child to be rude, inconsiderate or spoilt, giving the parents a withering look and assuming the unusual social behavior is a result of parental incompetence. They may comment, 'Well, if I had him for two weeks he would be a different child.' The parents' reaction may be that they would gladly let them have the child, as they need a rest, and to prove a point. ~ Tony Attwood

And then she caught the song. She fell upon it and music poured from the fiddle's hollow, bright and liquid like fire out of the heart of the earth. Pierre-Jean drew back and stood mesmerized. The room around Fin stirred as every ear bent to the ring of heartsong. It rushed through Fin and spread to the outermost and tiniest capillary reaches of her body. Her flesh sang. The hairs of her arms and neck roused and stood. She sped the bow across the strings. Her fingers danced on the fingerboard quick as fat raindrops. Every man in the room that night would later swear that there was a wind within it. They would tell their children and lovers that a hurricane had filled the room, toppled chairs, driven papers and sheets before it and blew not merely around them but through them, taking fears, grudges, malice, and contempt with it, sending them spiraling out into the night where they vanished among the stars like embers rising from a bonfire.

And though the spirited cry of the fiddle's song blew through others and around the room and everything in it, Fin sat at the heart of it. It poured into her. It found room in the closets and hollow places of her soul to settle and root. It planted seeds: courage, resolve, steadfastness. Fin gulped it in, seized it, held it fast. She needed it, had thirsted for it all her days. She saw the road ahead of her, and though she didn't understand it or comprehend her part in it, she knew that she needed the ancient and reckless power o ~ A.S. Peterson

That's what I was meaning. Ye've got to have freedom first. It's no use believing what other folks say; the only thing is for each man to fend for himself, Mr. Darnay. Each man standing on his own feet, finding his own path - " "Grand! ~ D.E. Stevenson

The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

To buy books as some do who make no use of them, only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because they were made by some famous tailor. ~ Alexander Pope

Worst case I'll bring Rain Man here. I'll tell him it's a date.
Aha, so he's cute, then?
Tasty. And smart. Can't beat that witha stick. ~ Alex Adams

When I was a younger man and had a life, I owned an El Camino pickup in the '70s. It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back. ~ William J. Clinton

Take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. ~ Elton Trueblood

To remain silent is out of the question for a strong and honest man. ~ Erik Larson

Life," said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night. ~ Henry Miller

There is no loneliness so great, so absolute, so utterly complete, as the loneliness of a man who cannot call upon his God. ~ Richard L. Evans

This afternoon I was sitting quietly with some twenty roughs when I noticed a sudden hush come over the room. I glanced nervously round and observed that forty pairs of eyes were on me ... I was reading a book. They had never seen someone read a book before. They were like natives watching a white man shave. ~ William Donaldson

Once I was asked by a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight, a man who took the liberty of glancing repeatedly at the correspondence in my lap, what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughter, who wanted to be a writer. I didn't know how to answer him, but before I could think I heard myself saying, 'Tell your daughter three things.'

"Tell her to read, I said. Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language. She may be paying attention to things in the world beyond anyone else's comprehension, things that feed her curiosity, her singular heart and mind. Tell her to read classics like The Odyssey. They've been around a long time because the patterns in them have proved endlessly useful, and, to borrow Evan Connell's observation, with a good book you never touch bottom. But warn your daughter that ideas of heroism, of love, of human duty and devotion that women have been writing about for centuries will not be available to her in this form. To find these voices she will have to search. When, on her own, she begins to ask, make her a present of George Eliot, or the travel writing of Alexandra David-Neel, or To the Lighthouse.

"Second, I said, tell your daughter that she can learn a great deal about writing by reading and by studying books about grammar and the organization of ideas, but that if she wishes to write ~ Barry Lopez

I think that most people would associate big schools of fish with healthy coral reefs. At Kingman, the predators keep the herd thin, so there aren't a lot of big fish schools. ~ Brian Skerry

The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Let a man avoid evil deeds as a man who loves life avoids poison. ~ Gautama Buddha

Let mortal man keep to his own
Mortality, and not expect too much. ~ Euripides

For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe
the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. ~ John F. Kennedy

We can never thank David Stern enough. His vision to use basketball to improve the quality of our lives to make this world a better and saner place, that guy, is the most important man in the history of basketball. ~ Bill Walton

People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness. ~ S.I. Hayakawa

Josef Stalin once said that 'Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.' Let us correct this: Ingratitude is a horrible disease belongs to the callous rocks! A grateful dog is a being much more developed than an ungrateful man! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

A man can accomplish much when the woman he loves supports him, even if she believes that what he does is foolishness. ~ Steve Berry

Walking with a dead man over my shoulder. Don't run away, it's only me ... ~ Ernest Cline

This is one of their [the Christians'] rules. Let no man that is learned, wise, or prudent come among us: but if they be unlearned, or a child, or an idiot, let him freely come. So they openly declare that none but the ignorant, and those devoid of understanding, slaves, women, and children, are fit disciples for the God they worship. ~ Aulus Cornelius Celsus

It's Fendi. French, Fendi, both start with an F ... I fell in love with it. Smells like grown-man cologne. ~ French Montana

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

It was a relationship between a young, inexperienced girl and an older man used to getting what he wanted. He'd come to her when she was vulnerable and convinced her that he was the only one who cared about her, and she'd believed him. And he did care about her, but he cared about himself a whole lot more. ~ Emily Poirier

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his great gifts ... the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element. ~ Carl Jung

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Outward success alienates a man from himself. ~ James T. Hill

There is no ownership. There is only stewardship. ~ LeeAnn Taylor

A billion years of evolution where only the fittest survived had been a total waste of time for this man and his bloodline. ~ Darrick Mackey