In Cold Blood

• 'They had no more feeling than the animals they killed'
• 'Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.'
• 'A lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'.'
• 'A family likably high-spirited, yet hard-working and neighbourly and generous.' [The Ashidas]
• '[Dick] wanted to go to college. Study to be an engineer. But we couldn't do it. Plain didn't have the money.' - Mr Hicock
• 'The village of Holcomb stands in the high wheat plains of Western Kansas.'
• 'Whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.'
• "What it comes down to is I want the diamonds more than I'm afraid of the snake.' - Perry
• 'Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr Clutter had in large measure obtained it.'
• 'With a knife in his hand, he, Dick, had power.'
• '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.' - Perry
• 'The murders represent a sudden, horrifying collision of two wildly divergent Americas.' - The Guardian
• 'She'd fill a tub with ice-cold water, put me in it, and hold me under till I was blue. Nearly drowned.' - Perry
• 'To be murdered. To be murdered. No. No. There's nothing worse than that. Nothing worse. Nothing.' - Bonnie
• 'The master of River Valley Farm, Herbert William Clutter.'
• '[Mr Clutter], the community's most widely-known citizen.'
• 'I didn't realise what I'd done [cutting Mr Clutter's throat] till I heard that sound. Like somebody drowning.' - Perry
• 'Only Perry Smith, who owned neither jacket nor tie, seemed sartorially misplaced... he looked as lonely and inappropriate as a seagull in a wheat field.'
• 'Hicock, 33 years old, died first, at 12:41 am; Smith, 36, died at 1:16.'
• 'Nice to see you' Hicock said with his most charming smile; it was as if he were greeting guests at his own funeral.'
• 'I don't believe in capital punishment.' - Perry
• 'It would be meaningless to apologise for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologise.' - Perry
• 'Perry possessed a quality, the aura of an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded' [Dewey]
• 'A pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining - just such a young woman as Nancy might have been.'
• 'The handsome white house, standing on an ample lawn of Bermuda grass, impressed Holcomb.'
• 'She [Nancy] felt it her duty to be available when younger girls came to her wanting help with their cooking, their sewing, or their music lessons - or, as often happened, to confide.'
• 'Nancy, popular and pretty'
• 'He [Kenyon] could be alone, free to bang, saw, and mess with his inventions.'
• 'The pattern of postnatal depression repeated itself [...] it lingered like a cloud that might rain or might not.'
• 'It was a changeling's face... now ominous, now impish, now soulful.'
• 'Imperfectly aligned features were the outcome of a car collision in 1950.' [Dick's face]
• '[Dick and Perry were] scrubbed, combed, as tidy as two dudes setting off on a double date.'
• 'The left eye being truly serpentine, with a venomous, sickly-blue squint.' [Dick's face]
• 'She [Nancy] was lying on her side, facing the wall, and the wall was covered in blood.'
• 'She [Mrs Clutter] looked as though she were praying.'
• 'His [Kenyon] head was propped by pillows, like they'd been stuffed under him to make an easier target.'
• 'Envy was constantly with him [Dick].'
• 'Dewey was certain that capital punishment is a deterrent to violent crime'
• 'Dewey shut his eyes; he kept them shut until he heard a thud-snap that announces a rope-broken neck.'