F Is For Fugitive Quotes
"Every violent death represents the climax of one story and an introduction to its sequel."
"Most of the cottages are one-story board-and-batten, painted pale green or white, built in the thirties by the look of them."
"My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed by the state of California."
"Since I'm self-employed, I pay my disability insurance before I even pay my rent."
"I live near the beach on a narrow side street that parallels Cabana Boulevard."
"I don't spend a lot of time at home, so I didn't much care what the place looked like."
"Winter storms had been blowing through at intervals since Christmas and the mountains were dark green, the fire danger laid to rest until summer rolled around again."
"I ran my hands through my mop, but it didn't do much good."
"If I had to find fault with him, I suppose I'd have to cite his gullibility, and a tendency to be passive when he ought to take a stand and fight."
"I hadn't begun to think about the situation up in Floral Beach, but I took a minute to open a file folder, which I labeled with Bailey Fowler's name."
"People in San Francisco, Coalinga, and Los Angeles will have a different tale to tell, but in Santa Teresa (aside from the Big One in 1925) we've had mild, friendly earthquakes that do little more than slop some of the water out of our swimming pools."
"I don't want a parent. I want you as a friend."
"Curious, I thought, that a man can reinvent himself."
"I stood there and stared at the back of his head. A painting by Whistler came immediately to mind."
"Our behavior was underscored by a hunger for sensation. Feelings were intense and events were played out in emotional extremes."
"The notion of a real death would have pushed us into a state of perplexity."
"Our sense of tragedy and our self-centeredness were so exaggerated that we weren't prepared to cope with any actual loss."
"There's a name for that now, for kids who eat inorganic oddities like gravel and clay."
"In my day, it just seemed like a fun thing to do and no one ever gave it a passing thought as far as I knew."
"Life is characterized by occasional towering outcroppings of rock."
"The hills look like soft humps of foam rubber, upholstered in variegated green velvet."
"The room remains bare and unnaturally tidy, which appeals to a streak of monasticism in me."
"The sunset was a light show of deep pink and salmon shades, gradually sinking, as if by a dimmer switch, through magenta into indigo."
"Any kind of emotional upset is hard on her. Stress. I guess it gets to all of us one way or another, myself included."
"Ever since Pop was diagnosed as terminal, my life's been hell."
"The irony is, we all thought she'd die long before him, and now it looks like he'll go first."
"To have a son accused of murder is the same as being accused of a crime oneself—parental failure of the direst sort."
"The fog had curled right up to the road, obscuring the beach in a bunting of yellow mist."
"You prob'ly don't even have kids. I bet you never even had a dog. You look like somebody breezing through life without a care in this world."
"If I had a kid and somebody'd killed her, I wouldn't be drunk in the middle of the day. I'd be out pulling this town apart until I found out who did it."
"We've always been close. I thought we still were. If she was in trouble, she could have come to me. I'd have done anything for her."
"Her looks were what caused all her problems."
"Either I do this my way or you can find somebody else."
"I knew I was alone, but the sense of that other presence was so vivid that it made my hair stand on my arms."
"Some women just seem to worry more than others."
"I staggered back to bed at 6:22 A.M. and slept until nine."
"There's something about physical battle that energizes and liberates, infusing the body with an ancient chemistry—a cheap high with a sometimes deadly effect."
"I wondered if he'd live long enough to have what he wanted most—his son, Bailey, whose fate he'd entrusted to my care."
"The only sound was the breath whiffling through his lips in an intermittent snore."
"Murderers are notoriously poor sports, refusing to play by the rules that govern the rest of us."
"I wanted healing sleep in excessive doses, and I finally gave myself up to a formless oblivion, undisturbed by dreams."
"The pipes clanked and groaned like a clan of ghosts."
"Nothing feels so useless as hanging around while someone else cleans."
"In the absence of life, the body seems to deteriorate before your very eyes."
"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her break the needle off the disposable syringe, dropping it in the wastebasket."
"I'm a bad-ass private eye who swoons in the same room with a needle?"
"Who knew what they might find in the bedding? An asp, a poisonous spider, a suicide note shoved down among the dirty sheets."
"I wasn't sure how much longer I could go on."
"Every bone in me was aching with the certainty that her body was here somewhere."
"I hate it when people can't comprehend the elementary stuff."
"Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list."
"Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff."
"The quicker we get there, the better, as far as I'm concerned."
"I love bad liars. They work so hard at it and the effort is so transparent."
"We're all capable of astonishing ourselves when it comes to sex."
"Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure."
"If love is what injures us, how can we heal?"