107 Quotes by Cornell Woolrich

Murder is such an elastic term, isn't it?("Mind Over Murder")

How simple death without weapons was. How safe for the killer.("Mind Over Murder")

Then without any warning the car stopped. They were there. "The ride's over," someone said. "End of the ride." For a moment nobody got out. They just sat there. The driver cut the ignition, and after that there was silence. Complete, uncanny silence, more frightening than the most threatening noise or violence could have been. Night silence. A silence that had death in it. ("The Number's Up")

That's a man's vital spot, the helpless thing he loves. ("Jane Brown's Body")

It was male, of course; menace is always male. ("Nightmare")

One of them hasn't got a uniform on or plainclothes either like the rest. He has on the white coat that is my nightmare and my horror. And in the crotch of one arm he is upending two long poles intertwined with canvas.The long-drawn-out death within life. The burial-alive of the mind, covering it over with fresh graveyard earth each time it tries to struggle through to the light. In this kind of death you never finish dying.("New York Blues")

It's six o'clock; my drink is at the three-quarter mark - three-quarters down not three-quarters up - and the night begins.("New York Blues")

I think fear neutralizes alcohol, weakens its anesthetic power. It's good for small fears; your boss, your wife, your bills, your dentist; all right then to take a drink. But for big ones it doesn't do any good. Like water on blazing gasoline, it will only quicken and compound it. It takes sand, in the literal and the slang sense, to smother the bonfire that is fear. And if you're out of sand, then you must burn up.("New York Blues")

She had said: 'You could not hate anyone that much -' She was mistaken. What did she know? She felt so good right now, this must be hate, what else could it be?("Mind Over Murder")