Dorothy B. Hughes Quotes & Sayings

Nobody can take away your future. Nobody can take away something you don't have yet. — Dorothy B. Hughes

He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite. — Dorothy B. Hughes

I was born when you kissed me. — Dorothy B. Hughes

I was born when he kissed me, I died when he left me, I lived a few weeks while he loved me — Dorothy B. Hughes

It's harder to come back than it is to arrive. — Dorothy B. Hughes

They were one unto the other, a circle whirling evenly, effortlessly, endlessly. He knew beauty and the intensity of a dream and he was meshed in a womb he called happiness. He did not think: This must come to an end in time. A circle had no beginning or end; it existed. He did not allow thought to enter the hours that he waited for her, laved in memory of her presence. He seldom left the apartment in those days. In the outside world there was time; in time, there was impatience. Better to remain within the dream. — Dorothy B. Hughes

I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me. — Dorothy B. Hughes

Dixon Steele: You know, when you first walked into the police station, I said to myself, "There she is - the one that's different. She's not coy or cute or corny. She's a good guy - I'm glad she's on my side. She speaks her mind and she knows what she wants."
Laurel Gray: Thank you, sir. But let me add: I also know what I don't want - and I don't want to be rushed. — Dorothy B. Hughes

He finished his drink. 'I don't like mornings either,' he said. That's why I'm a writer. — Dorothy B. Hughes

But not to our Muffin. — Dorothy B. Hughes

There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn't call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn't think you could. — Dorothy B. Hughes

No reason to feel nervous at night, not even at eleven thirty at night, in the heart of New York. Nothing ever happened to her kind of people; things happened to people living down those cross streets in old red bricks or old brownstones. Things threatened silver and gold dancers there in the Iridium Room across. But things didn't happen to her or anyone she knew. — Dorothy B. Hughes

He scraped through the dark sand to the center house, two stories, both pouring bands of light into the fog. There was warmth and gaiety within, through the downstairs window he could see young people gathered around a piano, their singing mocking the forces abroad on this cruel night. She was there, proptected by happiness and song and the good. He was separated from her only by a sand yard and a dark fence, by a lighted window and by her protectors.
He stood there until he was trembling with pity and rage. Then he fled, but his flight was slow as the flight in a dream, impeded by the deep sand and the blurring hands of the fog. He fled from the goodness of that home, and his hatred for Laurel throttled his brain. If she had come back to him, he would not be shut out, an outcast in a strange, cold world. — Dorothy B. Hughes

Liquor is such a nice substitute for facing adult life. — Dorothy B. Hughes

She carried her head like a lady and her body like a snake. — Dorothy B. Hughes

Once he'd had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow. — Dorothy B. Hughes