Quotes by Cornell Woolrich

Being broke didnt seem so awful as it had yesterday, being broke but being at peace with the world.(Dont Wait Up For Me Tonight)

Youd be surprised how difficult it is to ask alms of a stranger when youve never done it before, what a psychological barrier separates the honest man from the panhandler. (Dusk To Dawn)

It isnt dying Im afraid of, it isnt that at all; I know what it is to die, Ive died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. Thats what I cant stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, dont you? ... I really loved to write.

And I still say it was just a coincidence; he muttered pugnaciously. You say it too! Look at me and say it! It was just a coincidence. That happened to be the nearest place on the dial where they both met exactly, those two hands. My blows dented them. They got stuck there just as the works died, that was all. Stay sane whatever you do. Say it over and over. It was just a coincidence!Outside the tall French windows, in the velvety night-sky, the stars in all their glory twinkled derisively in at them. (Speak To Me Of Death)

It was dark now, and broodingly sluggish. Like something supine waiting to spring, with just the tip of its tail twitching. Leaves stood still on the trees. An evil green star glinted in the black sky like a hostile eye, like an evil spying eye.(For The Rest Of Her Life)

The girls face was the color of talcum. Her uncles was a death mask, a bone structure overlaid by parchment. Shanes was granite, with a glistening line of sweat just below his hair line. Hed never forget this night, the detective knew, no matter what else happened for the rest of his life. They were all getting scars on their souls, the sort of scars people got in the Dark Ages, when they believed in devils and black magic. (Speak To Me Of Death)

The thing, whatever it was - and no one was ever sure afterwards whether it was a dream or a fit or what - happened at that peculiar hour before dawn when human vitality is at its lowest ebb. The Blue Hour they sometimes call it, lheure bleue - the ribbon of darkness between the false dawn and the true, always blacker than all the rest of the night has been before it. Criminals break down and confess at that hour; suicides nerve themselves for their attempts; mists swirl in the sky; and - according to the old books of the monks and the hermits - strange, unholy shapes brood over the sleeping rooftops.At any rate, it was at this hour that her screams shattered the stillness of that top-floor apartment overlooking the Pare Monceau. Curdling, razor-edged screams that slashed through the thick bedroom door. (Im Dangerous Tonight)

He handed me something done up in paper. Your mask, he said. Dont put it on until we get past the city-limits. It was a frightening-looking thing when I did so. It was not a mask but a hood for the entire head, canvas and cardboard, chalk-white to simulate a skull, with deep black hollows for the eyes and grinning teeth for the mouth. The private highway, as we neared the house, was lined on both sides with parked cars. I counted fifteen of them as we bashed by; and there must have been as many more ahead, in the other direction. We drew up and he and I got out. I glanced in cautiously over my shoulder at the driver as we went by, to see if I could see his face, but he too had donned one of the death-masks.Never do that, the Messenger warned me in a low voice. Never try to penetrate any other members disguise. The house was as silent and lifeless as the last time - on the outside. Within it was a horrid, crawling charnel-house alive with skull-headed figures, their bodies encased in business-suits, tuxedos, and evening dresses. The lights were all dyed a ghastly green or ghostly blue, by means of colored tissue-paper sheathed around them. A group of masked musicians kept playing the Funeral March over and over, with brief pauses in between. A coffin stood in the center of the main living-room. I was drenched with sweat under my own mask and sick almost to death, even this early in the game.At last the Book-keeper, unmasked, appeared in their midst.Behind him came the Messenger. The dead-head guests all applauded enthusiastically and gathered around them in a ring.Those in other rooms came in. The musicians stopped the Death Match. The Book-keeper bowed, smiled graciously. Good evening, fellow corpses, was his chill greeting. We are gathered together to witness the induction of our newest member. There was an electric tension. Brother Bud! His voice rang out like a clarion in the silence. Step forward. (Graves For Living)

The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-built, sprawling, resembling a hunting-lodge. But theres no friendliness to it. There is something ominous and forbidding about its look, so dark, so forgotten, so secretive-looking. The kind of a house that has a maw to swallow with - a one-way house, that you feel will never disgorge any living thing that enters it. Leprous in the moonlight festering on its roof. And the two round sworls of light played by the heads of the car against its side, intersecting, form a pear-shaped oval that resembles a gleaming skull. (Jane Browns Body)

The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and theres suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with both hands, at the impact of it.A clawlike thing - two of the finger extremities already bare of flesh as far as the second joint; two more with only shriveled, bloodless, rotting remnants of it adhering, only the thumb intact, and that already unhealthy-looking, flabby. A dead hand - the hand of a skeleton - on a still-living body. A body he was dancing with only a few minutes ago.A rank odor, a smell of decay, of the grave and of the tomb, hovers about the two of them now.A woman points from the next table, screams. Shes seen it, too. She hides her face, cowers against her companions shoulder, shudders. Then he sees it too. His collars suddenly too tight for him.Others see it, one by one. A wave of impalpable horror spreads centrifugally from that thing lying there in the blazing electric light on OShaughnessys table. The skeleton at the feast! (Jane Browns Body)

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)

...all a guy can do is die once. The big difference is whether he dies clean - or dirty... (Im Dangerous Tonight)

Then without any warning the car stopped. They were there.The rides 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 Numbers Up)

And then finally she came - and the whole world faded out around us and we were just alone on the crowded sidewalk. Ive heard it called love.(I Wont Take a Minute aka Ill Just Be a Minute aka Wait for Me Downstairs aka Finger Of Doom)

Babette looked too good for the place tonight, but then goodness is only relative after all (Steps Going Up aka Guillotine aka Men Must Die)

When I came out into the outside room again, I saw her shoe still lying there, where it had come off in the course of our brief wrestle. It looked so pathetic there by itself without an owner, it looked so lonely, it looked so empty. Something made me pick it up arid take it in to her. Like when someones going away, you help them on with their coat, or their jackboots, or whatever it is they need for going away.I didnt try to put it back on her, I just set it down there beside her close at hand. Youre going to need this, I said to her in my mind. Youre starting on a long walk. Youre going to keep walking from now on, looking for your home.I stopped and wondered for a minute if that was what happened to all of us when we crossed over. Just keep walking, keep on walking, with no ahead and no in-back-of; tramps, vagrants in eternity. With our last hope and horizon - death - already taken away.In the Middle Ages they had lurid colors, a bright red hell, an azure heaven shot with gold stars. They knew where they were, at least. They could tell the difference. We, in the Twentieth, we just have the long walk, the long walk through the wispy backward-stringing mists of eternity, from nowhere to nowhere, never getting there, until youre so tired you almost wish you were alive again. (Life Is Weird Sometimes - first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER)

I wasnt that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldnt write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth.

A second red-orange spearhead leaps straight at OShaughnessy. The whole world seems to stand still. Then the gun behind it crashes, and theres a cataclysm of pain all over him, and a shock goes through him as if he ran head-on into a stone wall.A voice from the car says blurredly, while the ground rushes up to meet him, Finish him up, you guys! Im getting so I dont trust their looks no more, no matter how stiff they act! (Jane Browns Body)

Gosh, its easy! he marveled, open-mouthed. I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow em, and all it takes is one little push!He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The power of life and death over his fellowmen! Everyone had it, everyone strong enough to raise a violent arm, but they were afraid to use it. Well, he wasnt! And here hed been going around for weeks living from hand to mouth, without any money, without enough food, when everything he wanted lay within his reach all the while! He had been green all right, and no mistake about it!Death had become familiar. At seven it had been the most mysterious thing in the world to him, by midnight it was already an old story. (Dusk To Dawn)

I saw her sign the register, but her name isnt on it any more. The bellboy says he never saw her. Now theyve got me so Im scared and shaky, like a little kid is of the dark. I want you men to help me. Wont you men help me?Well help you - said the lieutenant in charge. Slowly, awfully slowly; I didnt like that slowness - if were able to. And I knew what he meant; if we find any evidence that your story is true.(All At Once, No Alice)