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Noir Fiction Quotes

Browse 89 quotes about Noir Fiction.

Noir Fiction Quotes

“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.”

SufferingDarkFictionMysteryThrillerManipulationIntrigueFast PacedNoir Fiction
Book:Segment of One
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“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")”

WritingCharacterWriterWritersCrime FictionFiction WritingNoirNoir FictionCornell WoolrichShort Fiction
Book:Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich
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“Charlotte had been surrounded by men most of her adult life. Only one attracted her, only one had she fallen in love with – and he turned out to be cruel and broke her heart. But he was dead. She had killed him. He was a Nazi, an SS officer, dashing and charismatic … an evil person.”

CorruptionDevotionNoir FictionHidden MotivesResistance FightersLondon FictionLiterary SuspenseMysterious PastUnreliable CharactersWartime Love Story
Book:The Wasp Trap
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“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.”

MysteryCrimeDetectivesCrime FictionNoirDetectiveCrime ThrillerMystery SuspenseMystery ThrillerNoir FictionDetective StoriesErnest HemingwayDetective FictionDetective NovelF Scott FitzgeraldSartreCornell WoolrichJean Paul SartreDetective NovelsHart CraneRaymond ChandlerDashiel HammettDetective NoirMystery And Crime DramaFrancois TruffautFrançois TruffautTruffaut
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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“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.”

PursuitCrime FictionNoirCrime ThrillerNoir FictionChaseChased
Book:Marihuana
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“G-Men been tryin’ to snag him for years. It ain’t gonna happen. He’s smart. He’s heartless. He’s ice cold. He’s been a killer since he was twelve. He’s survived much worse than you. And, by the way, don’t think he won’t take out a few Feds if he wants to. You’re just a bunch a shitkickers to him. Who’s gonna arrest him? Huh? Cause it won’t be anyone around here. You boys need to look elsewheres for your glory and medals. That badge you got don’t mean nothin’ on these streets.”

DarkMissingMurderGreedSecretsPrivate InvestigatorNoir FictionNeo NoirTelegramNew Evidence
Book:Bangtails, Grifters, and a Liar's Kiss
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“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.”

FictionMysteryLoversRainMurder MysteryMystery SuspenseMystery ThrillerNoir FictionDetective FictionHard Boiled
Book:Tell Me That You Love Me: A Hard-Boiled Short Fiction Featuring James Cartwright, P.I
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“She told me she was 17 going on 22, when she left home to find a new life in the city. She wanted to get into acting and be a big star someday. I said that was swell but a tough racket to break into. She said she knew that going in. She thought maybe she'd get a lucky break and go from there. I told her lucky breaks always came with a price.”

FictionMysteryLoversRainMurder MysteryMystery SuspenseMystery ThrillerNoir FictionDetective FictionHard Boiled
Book:Tell Me That You Love Me: A Hard-Boiled Short Fiction Featuring James Cartwright, P.I
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“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.”

Murder MysteryFiction WritingNoir FictionNoir Mystery
Book:Body In The Woods
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“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.”

FictionMysteryDramaExcitingThrillerSuspenseFast PacedNoir FictionDeciet
Book:Segment of One
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