23 Quotes by Dorothy B. Hughes

I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.

Danger is sweet.

He finished his drink. 'I don’t like mornings either,' he said. “That’s why I’m a writer.

He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.

There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn’t call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn’t think you could.

But not to our Muffin.

No reason to feel nervous at night, not even at eleven thirty at night, in the heart of New York. Nothing ever happened to her kind of people; things happened to people living down those cross streets in old red bricks or old brownstones. Things threatened silver and gold dancers there in the Iridium Room across. But things didn’t happen to her or anyone she knew.

Dixon Steele: You know, when you first walked into the police station, I said to myself, “There she is — the one that’s different. She’s not coy or cute or corny. She’s a good guy — I’m glad she’s on my side. She speaks her mind and she knows what she wants.”Laurel Gray: Thank you, sir. But let me add: I also know what I don’t want — and I don’t want to be rushed.

It’s harder to come back than it is to arrive.