Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.

James M. Cain

Categorized in : Years Girl Distance

Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.

James M. Cain

hate fear

If your writing doesn`t keep you up at night, it won`t keep anyone else up either".

James M. Cain

ifs writing night

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.

James M. Cain

writing character country

I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake

James M. Cain

rattlesnakes rabbits

Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.

James M. Cain

foreign-policy problem writing

She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

James M. Cain

upset mind people

You usually can tell when a writer is going down hill by the size of his liquor bill.

James M. Cain

hills size bills

If you have to do it, you can do it.

James M. Cain

you-can-do-it ifs can-do

I write of the wish that comes true--for some reason, a terrifying thought.

James M. Cain

reason wish writing

Time is the only critic.

James M. Cain

critics criticism

When it’s too good, you do it over again. Too good is too easy. If it’s too easy you have to worry. If you’re not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn’t going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night’s sleep, the next day I’m not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational.

James M. Cain

good-night writing lying

That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.

James M. Cain

hate fear

Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.

James M. Cain

car wife men

If you can't write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories.

James M. Cain

new-york stories writing

A guitar has moonlight in it.

James M. Cain

moonlight guitar

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called.

James M. Cain

tough effort conscious

New York is not even a city, it's a congerie of rotten villages.

James M. Cain

rotten cities new-york

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

James M. Cain

men

They threw me off the haytruck about noon.

James M. Cain

noon

A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

James M. Cain

typewriters college writing