61 Quotes by James Purdy

If the book’s bad enough, they’ll publish it, and if it’s bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it’ll sell.

I have wrote my name in hell,” Brian McFee had said as he was dying on the sawdust of the floor in the Bent Ridge Tavern.

The last human of importance the American people have been able to keep in the working end of their brain is your own Chicago triggerman, Dillinger. After him they kind of lost hold on keeping who’s who straight. So don’t be surprised if they don’t remember who Cabot Wright is, or if they do.

Behind this story so far is another story, as behind the girders of an ancient bridge is the skeleton of a child which superstition says keeps the bridge standing.

He’s America in action — opposed to quality.

Most people have their buttons,” Eustace continued.

Nobody can cause another man evil unless the second party involved allows him to.

Some people confess in the flesh, others on paper.

It was paper, as he had once joked to Amos, that he was really queer for.