Noir Fiction Quotes

I don’t like anything pointing at me, dollface, that includes an umbrella, a finger, or a gun, got it?

Life was better than he expected with his new Italian family inheritance, and it felt good to take a deep breath without fear of someone attacking him or his family.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.

I’ll tell the Chief and he’ll squash you like the little flea-ridden castrated cock you are.

Listen, you might as well learn now that life’s nothin’ but a dirt sandwich and save yourself a lot of time.

I can smack a ball-bearing between your abusive fiancé’s eyes before his wingtips hit the sidewalk.

He says it was tourists being careless, where I see a fiendishly clever murder attempt.” “Mr. McCarthy, you’d better explain.” “Patrick, please. You’ll be tempted to laugh. It was a banana skin.

She’s a cop’s wife. She understands what her husband does for a living,” the priest said.

When those we care about are weakest, that’s when we must be strong for them.

You can use all the hundred dollar words you want,” said Vic, “women like that are like TNT. You go after their man, they’d sooner kill you than look at you.

Jamie’s eyes gleamed. “God forgive me, I want there to be a murderer after the Falconer family so we in the College feel less to blame.

  Mary fought a savage impulse to slam the door on the couple. But they were too interesting to ignore in the circumstances of the murder. She caught sight of Richard spitting out a mouthful of hair.

George’s utterance of the nest and the trap belonged to a bigger mystery she did not yet understand. One day I will, she promised herself. She would stake her life that those last words from her son would be solved by her. They were steppingstones into… whatever the wind and the stars and the valiant trees held for her.

It was a Sunday morning, a perfect day for fishing. I had asked several other guys, but knew they all had their own plans. To everyone else, it was just another day of fishing.

And he never asked you about it?” “No, he never asked. If he had, I’m still not sure I would have told him.” “Told him what?” “That is was his baby.

Unbelievable and true. Anna Solokov is neither a frightened girl nor a criminal spider in the center of a huge web of drugs and god knows. No, that dangerous young woman could easily do both at different times, and to different people. No doubt that is part of George’s attraction to her. She is victim. Yet when necessary, or when it suits her, she is victimizer. Does he imagine he is battling for her soul?

So why not a woman, too—if I was dating her?

What the hell, Jack? What the hell were you doing back there? Cool the hell off. You’re used to people staring. Get a grip, man. Too early to let things get to you.

My friend and business partner, Gerald Peyton was 12 minutes late to the funeral. I’d reminded him it started at 2 p.m. “Yeah, yeah, Frank,” he said. “I’ll be there. Just be sure you make it.” Well, here I sat on my thumbs, and he was the no-show. He stopped at a bar and got sloshed, I thought.

He used his large shoulders and movements to impose his dominance over others as he strutted around but his facial expressions were a giveaway to people like Maeve who was born into a gritty group of native born fighting Irish. While many saw him as a man who worked his way up to power and influence and attained success that others fail to achieve, she saw him as a sham. He didn’t acquire loyalty by goodwill, but by corruption, fear, and loathing.

Ever since I could remember, She was all that mattered.

It was easy to make the obvious leap that the money was supposed to be my fee for whatever Lillian Holler wanted to expose. Sometimes my clients come with prepayment. I still questioned why she had picked me and how she had found me. But she was a wealthy woman and wealthy women have ways of finding out whatever it is they want to know.

I don't make threats," she said. "I make reality.

I was a small fish in a big sea of amorous deceit.

A long walk. A very long walk. Sand between my toes. The rough surf at times reaching and washing away my footprints. About a mile down the beach, I sat down and started thinking back through everything Vance had told me so far. Thought about what my next moves would be. Seeing the Asian guy tomorrow and having him snoop would settle one thing in my mind. Did Vance do it or not? Crucial. Until I knew that, I didn’t want to go any further.

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.

You’re lucky to have that face. But it doesn’t make you happy.

He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps.

Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that.

Call me Dudley. We're of equal rank. I'm older, but you're far better looking. I can tell we're going to be grand partners.

He told himself she wasn’t really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear.

To catch the bad guys, you've got to think like a bad guy - and that's why all the best detectives have a dark side...

Freedom breeds uncertainty; uncertainty invites chaos.

I have saved no one but myself and now I watch for the other universe to unravel in my skull, for the sky to become my own skin and fill with stars.

The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one...

There were three of them in the room now, where only two had first come in. Death was in the room with the two of them.

What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

On many nights I have availed myself of these very gentlemen, in the adjoining room. Each time, I wondered if you might arrive and see me, as I took my pleasure, allowing their hands to explore my body. There is no part of me that has not been kissed and enjoyed. I opened myself in welcome, encouraging my suitors to bury themselves deep and hard, to obliterate all reserve and find the heart of me.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

What else can it predict?” Now the other jocks encircled her like a bullseye. “Any event with data,” Holly said and really felt the need to leave. This was a set-up. Big Bob grinned. “Like when I’ll get a date?” Holly’s smile slid across her face. “Low probability events are hard to forecast.” “Huh?” Josh punched his shoulder. “She means, you are not likely to get a date.

In Nigeria, or Ghana, for that matter, no one grabs you by the ear to march you off to the police station. Vigilante justice is much faster and more effective.

No whiskey, no religion, nothing.

Gerald and Chet left town for the Peyton family reunion held this August below Tappahannock on the Northern Neck. Gerald invited me to go along, but I thanked my best friend and business partner. Shutting down things was bad for our bottom line. So, I stayed put and minded the office.

I rode a streetcar to the edge of the city limits, then I started to walk, swinging the old thumb whenever I saw a car coming.

She was a cute as a washtub.

She wasn't just a B-girl, she was carrying the whole ugly world in her eyes.

You ever choke a man out with his own shirt?” “What kind of question is that?” “A yes or no one.

How dull would it be to consume my meat with only one variety of sauce? My body and spirit would whither, being fed on such limited fare. To sample the delights of a great many women is considered right and healthy for a man, yet the opposite is held true for those of our sex. Where we display undue interest in sexual matters, even within marriage, we are thought immoral. For myself, I can only conceive of such limitation with horror: a torture for which I have no taste.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

The lady in the liquor store sold me a fifth of whiskey and the landlord’s name without taking her eyes off the book she was reading.

Among my greatest loves is the act of being pinned and invaded – not by one, or two or three, but by many, one after the other. What it is to lose yourself among many, so that your identity exists only as ‘woman’: a goddess of flesh and desire. No names, no promises, no social niceties, no conversational conventions: only lust and fulfillment.” Mademoiselle Noire - in The Gentlemen's Club

The world as we know it, cruel, dark and hopeless, have gifted us one more reason why, as a species, shoud we accept the fact that we're living in absolute ignorance. One more chunk of food for our fears and desperations. One more nightmarish and haunting thought for our dreams.

The digital sunset always looks better than the real thing, always. Because a sunset generated by the basic package of yellow sun and blue sky is unreliable. Today it may be stunning, hypnotic. Tomorrow it may be lifeless and dull, a white sky scorched with yellow. Tomorrow the sky will be velvet.

In near panic, I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin’s roofline a bursting fireball.

Or if she rejected me again, then I could take pictures of her fucking in a horse costume and blackmail her into loving me like she should.

Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don't you feel it?" I felt it. I took it easy.

Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat.

Carrying a shotgun makes you less amusing.

Isn’t there something I can talk about that won’t remind you that you wish you were dead?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she said.

It all started when she walked into my office that night unannounced. She told me she was in trouble. So I asked what kind. She said it was of the killing kind. Wanted to know if I could be trusted. I said up to a point, depending on who got killed.

His fear-inflamed mind sent the control-signal to his finger-joint to fold back. The trigger sliced back. The blast seemed to lift the booth clear off the floor, drop it down again. A pin-wheel of vacancy appeared in the glass, flinging off shards and slivers.

I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn’t anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops… Every goddamned restaurant I go to, it’s always the same way… They’ll have some old bag on the payroll — I figure they keep her locked up in the mop closet until they see me coming. And they’ll doll her up in the dirtiest goddamned apron they can find and smear that crappy red polish all over her fingernails, and everything about her is smeary and sloppy and smelly. And she’s the dame that always waits on me.

You were kind of mean to Brittany,” Holly said. “Was I? Trying to be protective, I guess. I have a problem with cheerleaders, sorority sisters, gangs, committees, groups, anything pack-related.” She shrugged. “Yeah, you’re not really a joiner.” I was never much for cheerleaders or jocks myself, especially in high school. I always knew that kind of popularity was short term, but when you’re a teenager it seemed like the most important thing in the world. But Holly was only twelve.

If I am capable of loving you Lord MacCaulay, of devoting myself to you, it will never be under the terms to which other women submit, for I am battle-born – a female warrior sworn to defy the bonds which enslave those of my sex. I will not, purely to follow common ideas of decency and femininity, give up my enjoyment of other men.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

There is enough conformity in the world Lord MacCaulay. I doubt that mine, or lack of it, will send the planet from its axis. Meanwhile, my heart does not soar for the riches you set before me. Perhaps one day, I may feel differently. For now, I wish to taste that which most women do not.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night-to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house.

Just the night before, a puma’s howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn’t get any richer than that.

I couldn't see why it shouldn't be my one hundred dollars.

You're a crime fiction writer if...The injustices of this world boil your blood. You become a fucking supernova. So you write.

about Tommy, you went through your whole life craving these little pockets of time and missing them for more time than you had them.

There are criminals everywhere these days, you know. One might end up missing the police! Who would have thought that possible?” The Maid The Informer by Steen Langtrup

The only thing that ever leaves this place is that muddy water in the Rappahannock.

After being dry for a couple a weeks, three cocktails went down quicker than a boner in a busted rubber.

How many remember where they were when the war began on the 1st of September 1939? I remember. I should remember. I started it. My name is Robert Leroy Parker.

Customers at a marathon do not have to be prepared for their excitement. When anything happens they get excited all at once. In that respect a marathon dance is like a bullfight.

There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby.

Evans made himself their spokesman. "Charlie and Joe," he offered. "Remember us? We brought a friend back with us this time." Girls evidently didn't count in this little subdivision of the underworld; a miscalculation many a shady character has made.

I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't 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.

I had an eviction notice and a handgun, but I didn’t make any connection between them. Then I read about the invisible hand of the market, and it totally made sense. I wasn’t getting enough work as a musician, and I wasn’t getting hired at different jobs I applied for, so it was time to diversify.

His cellphone alarm beeped. Now. Who would he nail? A single target tonight. So, a single bullet in the gun. David put the crosshairs on one of the guys walking out of the Quick Trip. Tall man, longish hair, scruffy beard. The guy pulled keys from his pocket and the crosshairs settled on his face. What was next? David pulled the trigger. The back of the guy’s head exploded. A massive wound. The guy’s friend looked around. The pregnant woman screamed. The black guy ran. The girls hugged each other. David pulled the trunk lid back down. Clicked and locked. A gentle walkway wound around the mall. Sol slowly drove away. David’s breaths came fast, almost pants. He then took his black pants off and removed his soiled underwear. He reached in the plastic bag for the fresh pair. Changing in the trunk of a dark and hot and moving car was difficult. Just part of the job now. When he pulled the trigger, he orgasmed. Always did. David slowed his breathing. Taylor series for ex = 1 + x + X2 / 2! + X3 / 3! etc. Yes, that was better. He closed his eyes and let go of the rope and let the rifle roll to one side. That guy’s head exploded. They drove away, below the speed limit. Didn’t want to attract attention. No need to, in no hurry.

Machines can't lie," I said, lying through my circuits.

Foreign food isn’t really my thing. I tasted whale once, and I was sick for a week.

That crap about doing something with your life are luxury problems. People like us have to play by a different rules.” #ShadowofSadd #Books

It’s not like the movies. There are rarely gunshots or explosions, bad guys hunting you down. You follow a lead to where it takes you. Most times it takes you to a dead end and you have to return to the beginning and follow another. Usually, you have to follow dozens of leads before you get anywhere. But, sometimes, you get lucky, and every door you open leads you to another until, finally, you stumble upon the truth. It’s not about justice, you see, or money—God knows it’s not about money. It’s about bringing the truth to light. It’s not glamorous, but it makes the world a little more truthful a place. That’s enough for me.

His most characteristic detective stories end with the realization that no rational account of events is possible, and his suspense stories tend to close with terror not dissipated but omnipresent, like God. ("Introduction")

My feet crunched over dry hickory leaves. Wood rangers had stapled up Smokey Bear (“Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!”) signs along the state roads. One cigarette butt flicked out a passing car window and there’d be real hell to pay.

They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived. Their wives from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St.Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisther with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliance and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling on them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice… and Alice…

The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division. ("Introduction")

I got this cousin, Lamar,' he said. 'Total fool. And by fool I mean motherfucker wouldn't find water in a swimming pool. But, like all fools, he once spoke a sentence of true wisdom. We'd been talking about this brother, who had a certain . . . fondness for the kind of place you and I find ourselves in right now, and Lamar, in the midst of all his usual ignorant bullshit, said, "You got to be wary of a man who spends all his time watching titties bounce."' Floyd threw his head back and laughed. 'Shit still gets me.

But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used series characters) or will be destroyed. This is why, despite his congenital pessimism, Woolrich manages any number of times to squeeze out an upbeat resolution. Precisely because we can never know whether a particular novel or story will be light or dark, allegre or noir, his work remains hauntingly suspenseful. ("Introduction")

Calvino remembered he had no food in the house and would have to go shopping on Sukhumvit Road. Then he planned to crawl into his bed and sleep, the kind of deep sleep without dreams or hopes, a sleep without regrets, without knowing or thinking how things got the way they are or how occasional fragments of decency escaped the forces of gravity.

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction")

One of the two owners, the man who had been sitting in the front room, was stretched out in there asleep, stockinged-toes pointed at the ceiling, one hand backed defensively against his eyes to ward off the light. He'd taken off his vest and shoes, and that strap that wasn't straight enough to be a suspender-strap was dangling now around one of the knobs at the foot of the bed. It ended in a holster, with a black, cross-grained slab of metal protruding from it. Turner couldn't take his eyes off it, while the long seconds that to him were minutes toiled by. That meant out, that black slab, more surely than any door. He had to have it. More than that, it meant a continuance of out, for so long as he had it. And he wanted out with all the desperate longing of all trapped things, blindly scratching, clawing their way through a maze to the open. To the open where the equal chance is.

Get a load of this, Frank.” Gerald Peyton’s pause set off his pronouncement. “She is expecting to get a wedding ring.” “That’s understandable,” I said, unsure how he could afford a ring on what our firm cleared. Diamond rings—more sold in December than in any other month of the year—went for a cool grand per karat. Weeks ago, I’d priced them—again—for my domestic situation. “What seems to be the problem?” “That’s a big leap for me to make.” “I expect you’ll make it with room to spare.

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it. The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction. Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure. Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies. Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral. Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior. (Hypothesis on Literature vs. Genre)

Inevitably, his vision verged toward the fantastic; he published a scattering of stories - most included in this volume - which appeared to conform to that genre at least to the degree that the fuller part of his vision could be seen as "mysteries." For Woolrich it all was fantastic; the clock in the tower, hand in the glove, out of control vehicle, errant gunshot which destroyed; whether destructive coincidence was masked in the "naturalistic" or the "incredible" was all pretty much the same to him. RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, NIGHTMARE are all great swollen dreams, turgid constructions of the night, obsession and grotesque outcome; to turn from these to the "fantastic" was not to turn at all. The work, as is usually the case with a major writer was perfectly formed, perfectly consistent, the vision leached into every area and pulled the book together. "Jane Brown's Body" is a suspense story. THE BRIDE WORE BLACK is science fiction. PHANTOM LADY is a gothic. RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK was a bildungsroman. It does not matter.

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living? You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy… You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any. And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering… …Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more. So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself. And hoping.

The remaining chain swung down, he wrenched the door out and he was free. The last thing he heard behind him was the oncoming stomp of running feet. Now began flight, that excruciating accompaniment to both the sleep-dream and the drug-dream as well. Down endless flights of stairs that seemed to have increased decimally since he had come up them so many days before. Four, fourteen, forty - there seemed no end to them, no bottom. Round and round he went, hand slapping at the worn guard-rail only at the turns to keep from bulleting head-on into the wall each time. The clamor had come out onto a landing high above him now, endless miles above him; a thin voice came shouting down the stair-well, "There he is! See him down there?" raising the hue and cry to the rest of the pack. Footsteps started cannonading down after him, like avenging thunder from on high. They only added wings to his effortless, almost cascading waterlike flight. Like a drunk, he was incapable of hurting himself. At one turning he went off his feet and rippled down the whole succeeding flight of stair-ribs like a wriggling snake. Then he got up again and plunged ahead, without consciousness of pain or smart. The whole staircase-structure seemed to hitch crazily from side to side with the velocity of his descent, but it was really he that was hitching. But behind him the oncoming thunder kept gaining. Then suddenly, after they'd kept on for hours, the stairs suddenly ended, he'd reached bottom at last. He tore out through a square of blackness at the end of the entrance-hall, and the kindly night received him, took him to itself - along with countless other things that stalk and kill and are dangerous if crossed. He had no knowledge of where he was; if he'd ever had, he'd lost it long ago. The drums of pursuit were still beating a rolling tattoo inside the tenement. He chose a direction at random, fled down the deserted street, the wand of light from a wan street-lamp flicking him in passing, so fast did he scurry by beneath it.

Finally, some people tell me that they avoid science fiction because it’s depressing. This is quite understandable if they happened to hit a streak of post-holocaust cautionary tales or a bunch of trendies trying to outwhine each other, or overdosed on sleaze-metal-punk-virtual-noir Capitalist Realism. But the accusation often, I think, reflects some timidity or gloom in the reader’s own mind: a distrust of change, a distrust of the imagination. A lot of people really do get scared and depressed if they have to think about anything they’re not perfectly familiar with; they’re afraid of losing control. If it isn’t about things they know all about already they won’t read it, if it’s a different color they hate it, if it isn’t McDonald’s they won’t eat at it. They don’t want to know that the world existed before they were, is bigger than they are, and will go on without them. They do not like history. They do not like science fiction. May they eat at McDonald’s and be happy in Heaven." Pro: "But what I like in and about science fiction includes these particular virtues: vitality, largeness, and exactness of imagination; playfulness, variety, and strength of metaphor; freedom from conventional literary expectations and mannerism; moral seriousness; wit; pizzazz; and beauty. Let me ride a moment on that last word. The beauty of a story may be intellectual, like the beauty of a mathematical proof or a crystalline structure; it may be aesthetic, the beauty of a well-made work; it may be human, emotional, moral; it is likely to be all three. Yet science fiction critics and reviewers still often treat the story as if it were a mere exposition of ideas, as if the intellectual “message” were all. This reductionism does a serious disservice to the sophisticated and powerful techniques and experiments of much contemporary science fiction. The writers are using language as postmodernists; the critics are decades behind, not even discussing the language, deaf to the implications of sounds, rhythms, recurrences, patterns—as if text were a mere vehicle for ideas, a kind of gelatin coating for the medicine. This is naive. And it totally misses what I love best in the best science fiction, its beauty." "I am certainly not going to talk about the beauty of my own stories. How about if I leave that to the critics and reviewers, and I talk about the ideas? Not the messages, though. There are no messages in these stories. They are not fortune cookies. They are stories.

In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure. In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall, and are predestined to fall, and are toppled over by malevolent powers; a world ruled by chance, fate and God the malign thug. But the everyday life he portrays is just as terrifying and treacherous. The dominant economic reality is the Depression, which for Woolrich usually means a frightened little guy in a rundown apartment with a hungry wife and children, no money, no job, and desperation eating him like a cancer. The dominant political reality is a police force made up of a few decent cops and a horde of sociopaths licensed to torture and kill, whose outrages are casually accepted by all concerned, not least by the victims. The prevailing emotional states are loneliness and fear. Events take place in darkness, menace breathes out of every corner of the night, the bleak cityscape comes alive on the page and in our hearts. ("Introduction")