Top 50 James M. Cain Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “That’s all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.”

— James M. Cain

2. “I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake.”

— James M. Cain

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

— James M. Cain

4. “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.”

— James M. Cain

5. “Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational.”

— James M. Cain

6. “A guitar has moonlight in it.”

— James M. Cain

Featured in: Guitar Quotes

7. “Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing his car, that’s larceny.”

— James M. Cain

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

— James M. Cain

9. “Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.”

— James M. Cain

10. “Time is the only critic.”

— James M. Cain

11. “The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.”

— James M. Cain

12. “We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual.”

— James M. Cain

13. “Love, when you get fear in it, it’s not love any more. It’s hate.”

— James M. Cain

14. “New York is not even a city, it’s a congerie of rotten villages.”

— James M. Cain

15. “They threw me off the haytruck about noon.”

— James M. Cain

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

— James M. Cain

17. “Just you and me and the road. Just a couple of tramps, just a couple of gypsies, that’s it, but we’ll be together.”

— James M. Cain

18. “She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.”

— James M. Cain

19. “Tomorrow night, if I come back, there’ll be kisses. Lovely ones, Frank. Not drunken kisses. Kisses with dreams in them. Kisses that come from life, not death.”

— James M. Cain

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

— James M. Cain

21. “He was enthusiastic about everything, but when she came in with the pie he grew positively lyrical.”

— James M. Cain

22. “If your writing doesn’t keep you up at night, it won’t keep anyone else up either”.”

— James M. Cain

23. “You usually can tell when a writer is going down hill by the size of his liquor bill.”

— James M. Cain

24. “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.”

— James M. Cain

25. “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.”

— James M. Cain

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

26. “Suppose you did get a job as a saleswoman? What would you get for it? No matter how they figure it up, when you’re selling goods you get paid on commission, because it stands to reason if you weren’t making commission they wouldn’t pay you. But who’s buying any goods? You’d have just stood around some store, all day long, waiting for the chance to make a living, and not making it. People eat, though, even now. You’ll have something coming in.”

— James M. Cain

27. “Mildred sat quite still, and when she heard Veda drive off she was consumed by a fury so cold that it almost seemed as though she felt nothing at all. It didn’t occur to her that she was acting less like a mother than like a lover who had unexpectedly discovered an act of faithlessness, and avenged it.”

— James M. Cain

28. “The water, the surf, the colors on the shore. You think they make the beauty of the tropical sea, aye, lad? They do not. ‘Tis the knowledge of what lurks below the surface of it, that awful-looking thing, as you call it, that carries death with every move that it makes. So it is, so it is with all beauty.”

— James M. Cain

29. “You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.”

— James M. Cain

30. “As I say, they don’t teach it at the academy, but you learn it on the job: not every man’s death is a crime.”

— James M. Cain

31. “She has something in her that I thought I had, and now I find I haven’t. Pride, or whatever it is. Nothing on earth could make Veda do what I’m going to do.”

— James M. Cain

32. “Miss Turner got out a card and savagely wrote a note on it, her eyes snapping as she handed it over to Mildred. “All right, you wanted to know why that lady offered you a job as waitress, and why I recommended you for this. It’s because you’ve let half your life slip by without learning anything but sleeping, cooking, and setting the table, and that’s all you’re good for. So get over there. It’s what you’ve got to do, so you may as well start doing it.”

— James M. Cain

33. “It makes it even, but look at us now. We were up on a mountain. We were up so high, Frank. We had it all, out there, that night. I didn’t know I could feel anything like that. And we kissed and sealed it so it would be there forever, no matter what happened. We had more than any two people in the world. And then we fell down. First you, and then me. Yes, it makes it even. We’re down here together. But we’re not up high any more. Our beautiful mountain is gone.”

— James M. Cain

34. “Restaurant, hey. That’s what I’ve got. Whole goddam country lives selling hot dogs to each other.”

— James M. Cain

35. “Presently Ray was panting like a little dog, and her whimpering had a pitiful note in it that made Mildred want to cry out against the injustice that one so small, so helpless, should have to bear such agony. But she sat perfectly still, not distracting by so much as a movement the attention of those on whom Ray’s chance depended.”

— James M. Cain

36. “You must be a hell cat, though. You couldn’t make me feel like this if you weren’t.” “That’s what we’re going to do. Kiss me, Frank. On the mouth.” I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church.”

— James M. Cain

37. “And then at last I began to realize how terrible a thing it was, the dream that you make come true.”

— James M. Cain

38. “Don’t wash family linen in public, or with anyone except family.”

— James M. Cain

39. “There are some foods some people just don’t like. I just don’t like movies. People tell me, don’t you care what they’ve done to your book? I tell them, they haven’t done anything to my book. It’s right there on the shelf.”

— James M. Cain

40. “People are sold over this desk just like cattle in the Chicago yards, and for exactly the same reason: they’ve got the points the buyer wants. All right, now take a look at something that does concern you. See those greens? That means ‘No Married Women.”

— James M. Cain

41. “We’re the friendliest enemies that ever were.”

— James M. Cain

42. “Indeed, the whole scene had an ancient, almost classical ugliness to it, for they uttered the same recriminations that have been uttered since the beginning of marriage, and added little of originality to them, and nothing of beauty.”

— James M. Cain

43. “They spoke quickly, as though they were saying things that scalded their mouths, and had to be cooled with spit.”

— James M. Cain

44. “It was a long time before Mildred could bring herself to send Veda to bed. She wanted to keep her there, to warm herself in this sunny, carefree friendliness that had never been there before. When the time finally came, she took Veda in herself, and helped her undress, and put her in bed, and held her tight for a moment, still ecstatic at the miracle that had come to pass.”

— James M. Cain

45. “She left, feeling sullen over her wasted afternoon and wasted bus fare. It was her first experience with the sexological advertiser, though she was to find out he was fairly common. Usually he was some phony calling himself a writer, an agent, or a talent scout, who had found out that for a dollar and a half’s worth of newspaper space he could have a daylong procession of girls at his door, all desperate for work, all willing to do almost anything to get it.”

— James M. Cain

46. “Ain’t that funny? You fall for a guy because he’s smart and then you find out he’s smart.”

— James M. Cain

47. “Mildred, who had listened to this eulogy as one might listen to soul-nourishing organ music, came to herself with a start, and murmured: “She’s a wonderful girl.” “No – is a wonderful singer.”

— James M. Cain

48. “We had all that love, and we just cracked up under it. It’s a big airplane engine, that takes you through the sky, right up to the top of the mountain. But when you put it in a Ford, it just shakes it to pieces. That’s what we are, Frank, a couple of Fords. God is up there laughing at us.”

— James M. Cain

49. “Though she was only eleven she was something to look at twice.”

— James M. Cain

50. “Don’t you know? After she’s been Mr. Hannen’s candy kid? The one that was going to New York and play the pyanner so they’d all be hollering for her? You think she’s going to see them people now, and just be Veda? Not her. She’s the queen, or she don’t play. She ain’t giving no party, and you ain’t either.” “I’ve simply got to do something.” “Can’t you leave her alone?”

— James M. Cain