23 Quotes by Dorothy B. Hughes

I was born when you kissed me.

Nobody can take away your future. Nobody can take away something you don’t have yet.

Liquor is such a nice substitute for facing adult life.

He wanted to know about her. But he couldn’t ask questions, not open questions. She was like him; she’d lie.

She caught up her purse and she ran, ran as if she raced with Death, and as if Death were the fleeter of foot.

He drove until emotional exhaustion left him empty as a gourd. Until no tears, no rage, no pity had meaning for him.

There were always eyes. A little tailor on his way home from a movie. A waitress in a drive-in. A butcher-boy on a bicycle. A room clerk with a wet pointed nose. A detective’s wife who was alert, too alert. Whose eyes saw too much. There were always eyes but they didn’t see. He had proved it.

She was afraid. It wasn’t a tremble of fear. It was a dark hood hanging over her head. She was meant to die. That was why she was on the Chief speeding eastward. This was her bier.

He didn’t consciously bring Brub to memory. It was one of those minnows of thought, darting through the unruffled pond of his thinking.