In cold blood quotes
Subdecks (1)
Cards (148)
- "Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives."
- "Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr. Clutter had in large measure obtained it"
- "All that belonged to [Mr Clutter], Dick, but he would never have it why should that son-of-a-bitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why should that 'big-shot bastard' have all the luck?"
- "They [the Clutters] never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it's just the Clutters were the ones that had to pay for it."
- "The murders represent a sudden, horrifying collision of two wildly divergent Americas."
- "he labored 18 hours a day"
- "Mrs. Clare raised her voice. "BECAUSE HE'S DEAD. And Bonnie, too. And Nancy. And the boy. Somebody shot them"
- "Towering bird, the yellow 'sort of parrot' . . . the parrot remained, a hovering avenger."
- "Long, long table. You never imagined so much food. Oysters. Turkeys. Hot dogs. Fruit you could make into a million fruit cups. And, listen - it's every bit free."
- "This is authentic. I've got a map. I've got the whole history. It was buried there back in 1821 - Peruvian bullion, jewellery. Sixty million dollars."
- "or in his imagination roam through the house he hoped to have, and through the garden he meant to plant, and under trees yet to be seeded. He was very certain that someday his own oasis of oaks and elms would stand upon those shadeless plains. Someday God willing."
- "the dream of settling on his farm had not come true, for his wife's fear of living in that sort of isolation had never lessened."
- "Perry urged Dick to fish 'we may never have another chance' . . . moments later Dick had forgotten his pain . . . Perry had hooked 'a big one'. Ten feet of soaring, plunging sailfish, it leaped, arched like a rainbow, dived, sank deep, tugged the line taut, rose, flew, fell, rose."
- "(this was during the Depression)"
- "there was this one nurse, she used to call me '*****
- "to be murdered. To be murdered. No. no. there's nothing worse. Nothing worse than that. Nothing"
- "But Dick always said if the chance of a real big score came up, he could rely on Perry Smith to go partners."
- "Concussed his head in a car smash-up. After that, he wasn't the same boy."
- "Dick never stopped asking me about the family. How many was they? What ages would the kids be now? Exactly how did you get to the house? How was it laid out? Did Mr. Clutter keep safe? . . . Next thing I knew, Dick was talking about killing Mr Clutter. Said him and Perry was gonna go out there and rob the place . . . how him and Perry was gonna tie them people up and gun them down."
- "Perry O'Parsons', the name invented for the singing sensation of stage and screen."
- "Perry O'Parsons had died without having ever lived"
- "But now that it was deprived of the late owner's dedicated attention, the first threads of decay's cobweb were being spun, A gravel rake lay rusting in the driveway; the lawn was parched and shabby . . . the abulances had driven across the tyre trcks were still visble"
- "The master of River Valley Farm, Herbert William Clutter"
- "he was not as rich as the richest man in Holcomb . . . he was, however, the community's most widely known citizen"
- "Dick, and all his talk about a rich man's safe, and here I am crawling on my belly to steal a child's silver dollar. One dollar. And I'm crawling on my belly to get it"
- "I didn't realise what I'd done till I heard that sound. Like somebody drowning"
- "two thin grey toms . . . prowled the square, stopping to examine the cars . . . the cats were hunting for dead birds caught in the vehicles' engine grilles . . . 'because most of my life I've done what they're doing. The equivalent.'"
- "he'd unscrewed the bulb, broken it, and with the broken glass cut his wrists and ankles . . . 'the walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird"
- "throughout his life - as a child, poor and meanly treated, as a foot-loose youth, as an imprisoned man - the yellow bird . . . soared across Perry's dreams, an avenging angel who savaged his enemies or, as now, rescued him in moments of mortal danger"
- "Hickock, too, was sharply dressed in clothes provided by his parents: trim blue-serge trousers, a white shirt, a narrow dark-blue tie"
- "Only Perry Smith, who owned neither jacket nor tie, seemed sartorially misplaced. Wearing an open-necked shirt (borrowed from Mr Meier) and blue jeans rolled up at the cuffs, he looked as lonely and inappropriate as a seagull in a wheat field"
- "he woke up shouting, 'the bird is Jesus!'"
- "Hickock, 33 years old, died first, at 12.41 a.m.; Smith, 36, died at 1.16 . . ."
- "Dewey had watched them die"