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4e3ce1d
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There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.
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Jim Thompson |
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494d9a5
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A weed is a plant out of place.
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Jim Thompson |
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3a1ff61
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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 inf..
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social-commentary
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Jim Thompson |
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a0fd930
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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c150255
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I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you could be doing something pretty nice. And then I thought, well, maybe it ain't so strange after all. Maybe it's like this with most people, everyone..
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violence
murder
love
human-condition
crime-fiction
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Jim Thompson |
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438a9d2
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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.
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rage
life
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Jim Thompson |
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9954640
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I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more.
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thompson
suspense
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Jim Thompson |
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7ed5e87
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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3d2ecb6
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Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
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Jim Thompson |
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4a793e8
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what else is there to do but laugh and joke...how else can you bear up under the unbearable?
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Jim Thompson |
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ade6065
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The phone rang. Softly, in actuality, yet it seemed loud and ominous, as phones do at night in dark hotel rooms.
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hotel
noir
ominous
phone
night
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Jim Thompson |
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f8e0026
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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.
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life
problems
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Jim Thompson |
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7ca7409
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You've got no time at all, but it seems like you've got forever. You've got nothing to do, but it seems like you've got everything. You make coffee and smoke a few cigarettes; and the hands of the clock have gone crazy on you. They haven't moved hardly, they've hardly budged out of the place you last saw them, but they've measured off a half? two-thirds? of your life. You've got forever, but that's no time at all.
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Jim Thompson |
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d30f4c5
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If we all had what we wanted to eat... We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry.
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Jim Thompson |
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de2cacc
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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5fcd5c3
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Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.
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Jim Thompson |
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66dd999
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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62ce5dd
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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.
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human-condition
crime-fiction
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Jim Thompson |
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b0be118
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you might think it wasn't real nice to kick a dying man, and maybe it wasn't, but I'd been wanting to kick him for a long time, and it just never had seemed safe till now
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Jim Thompson |
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c09488d
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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77b742b
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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3738625
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Existence and proof are inseparables. You have to have the second to have the first. I
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Jim Thompson |
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9d782cd
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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f5eee57
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He was staring off across the long broad fields, raising his eyes above the red clay soil to the horizon, looking across the fiery-red plains of Hell with its endless gauntlet of dead-brown imps---the cotton, the cotton, cotton, cotton---closing his eyes to them and seeing only the horizon and its towering ranks of derricks. Steel giants, snorting and chuckling amongst themselves; sneering wonderingly at the cotton and the bent-backed pigmi..
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Jim Thompson |
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c6138b8
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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95cdfc3
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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 do..
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Jim Thompson |
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8f82a95
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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eda33e7
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You've got no time at all, but it seems like you've got forever. You've got nothing to do, but it seems like you've got everything. You make coffee and smoke a few cigarettes; and the hands of the clock have gone crazy on you. They haven't moved hardly, they've hardly budged out of the place you last saw them, but they've measured off a half? two-thirds? of your life. You've got forever, but that's no time at all. You've got forever; and so..
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Jim Thompson |
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eb74171
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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6237465
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Screw you! I'm not going to tell you what I was going to say because I'm a decent woman. But if I wasn't, you know what I'd say? You know what I'd do to you, you rotten son-of-a-bitch? I'd heist a leg and pee in your ear until it washed out that stinking pile of crap you call brains!
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Jim Thompson |
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b37f8ca
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Sure there's a hell...
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Jim Thompson |
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06ca5fc
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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16ca0e5
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Rothman gave me another sharp look, and then he looked down at his desk. 'Lou' he said softly, 'do you know how many days a year an ironworker works? Do you know what his life expectancy is? Did you ever see an old ironworker? Did you ever stop to figure that there's all kinds of dying, but only one way of being dead?
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Jim Thompson |
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ad15d41
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Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted deserved what he got.
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Jim Thompson |
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678cca2
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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 tena..
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Jim Thompson |
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447fab8
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The world was a shitpot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it.
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world
shitpot
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Jim Thompson |
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0db30f5
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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.
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noir
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Jim Thompson |
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214ca3a
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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 th..
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Jim Thompson |
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69e96fd
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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 h..
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Jim Thompson |
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6445460
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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.
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Jim Thompson |
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b2cf558
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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 pe..
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war
easy-answers
pills
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Jim Thompson |
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c8459be
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When life attains a crisis, man's focus narrows. [...] The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion.
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Jim Thompson |
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1c8e725
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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.
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women
tail
teeth
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Jim Thompson |
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b08dad7
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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.
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Jim Thompson |