Cornell Woolrich Quotes

• It's hard to say goodbye for good at any time or any place. It's harder still to say it through a meshed wire. It crisscrossed his face into little diagonals, gave me only little broken-up molecules of it at a time. It stenciled a cold, rigid frame around every kiss.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Goodbye, Kissing, Broken

  47 Copy quote

• Time is strange. A moment can be as short as a breath, or as long as eternity.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Time, Long, Strange

  18 Copy quote

• I was trying to cheat death. I was only trying to surmount for a little while the darkness that all my life I surely knew was going to come rolling in on me some day and obliterate me. I was only to stay alive a little brief while longer, after I was already gone.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Darkness, Trying, Rolling

  Cornell Woolrich, Francis M. Nevins (2005). “Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories”, p.22, Carroll & Graf

  18 Copy quote

• Each unto himself has his own world that he looks out upon, and though someone else were to stand on the very selfsame inch of ground your feet were placed upon, guided by chalk marks, he would not see the same things you did.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Feet, Looks, World

  Cornell Woolrich (2007). “Night Has a Thousand Eyes”, p.77, Pegasus Books

  14 Copy quote

• It isn't dying I'm afraid of, it isn't that at all; I know what it is to die, I've died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. That's what I can't stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, don't you? ... I really loved to write.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Writing, Mean, Dying

  13 Copy quote

• It's just some instinct as old as fear: you seek the dark when you hide, you seek the light when the need to hide is gone. All the animals have it too.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Dark, Animal

  Cornell Woolrich, Francis M. Nevins (2005). “Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories”, p.382, Carroll & Graf

  8 Copy quote

• The girl's face was the color of talcum. Her uncle's was a death mask, a bone structure overlaid by parchment. Shane's was granite, with a glistening line of sweat just below his hair line. He'd 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)

  Cornell Woolrich

  Girl, Uncles, Fear

  10 Copy quote

• As for her perfume, it was the kind you only noticed after she'd left a room, not while she was still in it. Even then you didn't realize it was perfume, you only wondered what had made you think of her just then.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Thinking, Rooms, Kind

  Cornell Woolrich (1965). “The Dark Side of Love: Tales of Love and Death”

  7 Copy quote

• All guys are scared of each other, didn't you know that? I'm not the only one. We're all born afraid.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Guy, Scared

  Cornell Woolrich, Francis M. Nevins (2005). “Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories”, p.388, Carroll & Graf

  10 Copy quote

• I had that trapped feeling, like some sort of a poor insect that you've put inside a downturned glass, and it tries to climb up the sides, and it can't, and it can't, and it can't.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Glasses, Feelings, Trying

  Cornell Woolrich, Mark T. Bassett (1991). “Blues of a Lifetime: Autobiography of Cornell Woolrich”, p.16, Popular Press

  4 Copy quote

• The preliminaries were out of the way, the creative process was about to begin. The creative process, that mystic life force, that splurge out of which has come the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, the Fantasie Impromptu, the Bayeux tapestries, Romeo and Juliet, the windows of Chartres Cathedral, Paradise Lost - and a pulp murder story by Dan Moody. The process is the same in all; if the results are a little uneven, that doesn't invalidate the basic similarity of origin.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Writing, Venus De Milo, Creative

  12 Copy quote

• You see, this would be a death by the imagination. And though the imagination feeds on phantoms, it needs a premise in reality to begin with. Then it can go on from there under its own power.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Reality, Imagination

  10 Copy quote

• I think fear neutralizes alcohol, weakens its anesthetic power. It's good for small fears; your boss, your wife, your bills, your dentist; all right then to take a drink. But for big ones it doesn't do any good. Like water on blazing gasoline, it will only quicken and compound it. It takes sand, in the literal and the slang sense, to smother the bonfire that is fear. And if you're out of sand, then you must burn up.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Thinking, Water

  8 Copy quote

• Beside her, her husband could only splutter, and he stopped even that when she half turned to flash him a smile - the instinctive, brilliant smile of a woman who knows what feeble creatures men can be. You couldn't learn to smile like that. It was something a woman either knew the minute she was born, or never knew at all. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")

  Cornell Woolrich

  Husband, Men, Tonight

  4 Copy quote

• It was as simple as that - they met. As simple as only beautiful things can be beautiful, as only life-changing things, turning-point things, can be simple. ("For The Rest Of Her Life")

  Cornell Woolrich

  Beautiful, Life Changing, Simple

  9 Copy quote

• I rang the bell and she opened the door, dried her hands, and said heartily: 'Hello, stranger. I was just saying to Cliff only tonight, it's about time you showed up around here.' I wanted to detach him from her, but first I had to sit through about ten minutes of her. She was my sister, but you don't tell women things like I wanted to tell him. I don't know why, but you don't. You tell them the things you have under control; the things that you're frightened of, you tell other men if you tell anyone.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Men, Doors

  Cornell Woolrich (1943). “I wouldn't be in your shoes”

  4 Copy quote

• Fear! Fear again, for the first time since his 'teens. Fear, that he thought he would never know any more. Fear that no weapon, no jeopardy, no natural cataclysm, has ever been able to inspire until now. And now here it is running icily through him in the hot Chinese noon. Fear for the thing he loves, the only fear that can ever wholly cow the reckless and the brave.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Running, Fear, Brave

  4 Copy quote

• I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me? ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER)

  Cornell Woolrich

  Heart, Past, Numbness

  4 Copy quote

• After she's gone, another brief lull sets in. This one is probably the last. But what good is a lull? It's only a breathing spell in which to get more frightened. Because anticipatory fear is always twice as strong as present fear. Anticipatory fear has both fears in it at once - the anticipatory one and the one that comes simultaneously with the dread happening itself. Present fear only has the one, because by that time anticipation is over.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Strong, Fear, Breathing

  4 Copy quote

• It seems so long ago that he was last afraid of anything. Seventeen, was he then? Eighteen? Sometimes he thinks he's missing a lot by being like this - fear gives life a fillip. He wonders how it is he lost it all, and what there is - if anything - ever to bring it back.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Thinking, Long Ago

  4 Copy quote

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