Quotes by James M. Cain

James M. Cain

A guitar has moonlight in it.

Guitar

Moonlight

A gun is like breath to a drowning man–it has to be drawn in haste.

Gun

Haste

Men

A home is not a museum. It doesn’t have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.

Home

Mean

Museums

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.

College

Typewriters

Writing

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

Men

I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake

Rabbits

Rattlesnakes

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

Conscious

Effort

Tough

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.

Character

Country

Writing

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

Reason

Wish

Writing

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.

New York

Stories

Writing

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Beer

Bills

Can Do

Car

Character

Cities

College

Conscious

Country

Cracks

Criticism

Critics

Distance

Dog

Effort

Fear

Foreign Policy

Girl

Good Night

Guitar

Gun

Hands

Haste

Hate

Hills

Home

Ifs

Lying

Mean

Men

Mind

Moonlight

Museums

New York

Night

Noon

People

Problem

Rabbits

Rattlesnakes

Reason

Rivers

Rotten

Size

Stories

Tough

Typewriters

Upset

Waiting

Whips

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by James M. Cain

James M. Cain

A guitar has moonlight in it.

A gun is like breath to a drowning man–it has to be drawn in haste.

A home is not a museum. It doesn’t have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.

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

I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake

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

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

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.

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Topics by James M. Cain

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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