Quotes & Sayings About Pulp Fiction

Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that. — James Ellroy

[Hollywood] studios are handing out money to make independent films now, but they all want the same thing. They want the style and the deadpan delivery of RESERVOIR DOGS or FARGO and so they imitate those movies. They want PULP FICTION, but they get it all wrong! They get the detachment, but that's it. And then it's all about style, and in the end what do you learn about the characters? Nothing. You learn you wasted two hours. — Stanley Tucci

Meanwhile, however, what's most bothersome about Pulp Fiction is its success. This is not to be mean-spirited about Tarantino himself; may he harvest all the available millions. But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming. — Stanley Kauffmann

In some ways, I think 'Pulp Fiction' hurt cinema in a very, very minor, small way. It did a massive amount of good. But it also made it impossible to make a movie even remotely like it without someone comparing it to 'Pulp Fiction.' — Roger Avary

I like to write literature that reads like pulp fiction. — Nike N. Chillemi

In retrospect, 'Pulp Fiction' isn't just the template for everything Tarantino has done but the yardstick by which everything else he does is measured one way or another. — Steve Erickson

I lean back into your body - memory is a shade of the color blue.
Painted the walls white, the clocks went back an hour and who knew you'd be the one?
I am okay with chopsticks, you know how to please just about any man. Your cheeks a hot air balloon lifting up into the sky, a kind of yellow vibrant, tastes like the milkshakes in Pulp Fiction.
The McDonald's lobby is now open 24 hours in case you really want a big mac or some french fries and do not have a car. It might make you fat but it might be worth it. The ones who will love you regardless. — Eric Shaw

It remains a mystery to me why some of that [pulp] fiction should be judged inferior to the rafts and rafts of bad social [literary] fiction which continues to be treated by literary editors as if it were somehow superior, or at least worthier of our attention. The careerist literary imperialism of the Bloomsbury years did a lot to produce fiction's present unseemly polarities. — Michael Moorcock

It's simple. If you go to see 'Saturday Night Fever' expecting it to be good, it's a corker. However, if you go expecting it to be a crock of shit, it's that, too. Thus 'Saturday Night Fever' can exist in two mutually opposing states at the very same time, yet only by the weight of our expectations. From this principle we can deduce that any opposing states can be governed by human expectation - even, as in the case of retro-deficit-engineering, the present use of a future technology."
"I think I understand that. Does it work with any John Travolta movie?"
"Only the artistically ambiguous ones such as 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Face/Off.' 'Battlefield Earth' doesn't work, because it's a stinker no matter how much you think you're going to like it, and 'Get Shorty' doesn't work either, because you'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy it, irrespective of any preconceived notions. — Jasper Fforde

When you make a film, if you are an insider, you're usually the last person to know that your film is not right. But when you are an outsider, you have a little more objectivity.I think a part of my success is that I am naturally objective. I am not an insider.In many ways, Anupama is the same.
Foreword, First Day First Show — Shah Rukh Khan

Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck. — Leslie Ford

Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum. — John Hume

Everyone gets killed in the shower. Don't you go to the movies? Psycho. Dead in shower. The MExican in No country for Old Men. Dead in shower. Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath. Almost dead in shower, or in the bath, anyway. But she did that thing with her toe and got out OD. Still the shower, though ... Glen Close in Fatal Attraction. Dead in shower. John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Very dead in shower. But never closets. I can't think of anyone shot in a closet. This is why I hide in closets. — Derek B. Miller

Now I pass up about twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there'd be no sense to it. That's the fix I am in. I don't know anything else, don't enjoy anything else, don't want to know or enjoy anything else. You can't weight that against any sum of money. Money's good stuff. I haven't anything against it. — Dashiell Hammett

He told himself she wasn't really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear. — David Goodis

I am convinced that if stories such as these have any lasting value, it is in revealing the kind of work young pulp-writers were doing in those days when rates were low and one had to make a typewriter smoke in order to keep eating. — Hugh B. Cave

'Pulp Fiction' was probably one of the first films I ever saw that really kind of took effect on me. I was about four years old - obviously wasn't supposed to be seeing that film; my sister kind of sneaked it out and we got to see it. She's older than me. That was something I always used to watch. — Aaron Johnson

If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Chinese went to their knees trying desperately to get their rifles into action, but the Mongols were on them too fast. Abusing their horses cruelly, they drove them right in among the riflemen, and men were kicked, stamped upon and died beneath frantic hooves. — Walter Kaylin

Given that most movies are bad, and that there are whole categories and sub-categories of badness - the sequel, the Madonna Movie, the Friday 13th Series, or Movies Starring John Travolta Before Pulp Fiction - it is almost impossible to choose a single film for worst movie of all time. But strangely, I do have a nomination and I believe it is actually the worst movie ever made. It is Boxing Helena. The director is David Lynch's daughter, and the film comes with the almost insane-making faults that the family connection might imply. — Andrew O'Hagan

I can remember when 'Pulp Fiction' came out. I was, like, 10 years old. But I remember the impact that it had. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Nick Yablon ranges widely, from log cabins to skyscrapers and from Tocqueville to pulp fiction. He combines imaginative research with probing interpretation. Untimely Ruins offers fresh and challenging insights about the American built environment on nearly every page. — T. J. Jackson Lears

There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks ... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them ... Decent people lost their jobs ... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. — Raymond Chandler

Borges was unapologetically smart and equally sentimental; a proto-geek, blind to distinctions between low pulp fiction and high criticism, experimental but never arch, and always playful, with a humor as dry as dust. — John Hodgman

I think I was shown Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas at seven or eight. That's really bad. I think I've turned out all right; it didn't harm me too much. — Ed Speleers

In Hamilton's The Universe Wreckers ... it was in that novel that, for the first time, I learned Neptune had a satellite named Triton ... It was from The Drums of Tapajos that I first learned there was a Mato Grosso area in the Amazon basin. It was from The Black Star Passes and other stories by John W. Campbell that I first heard of relativity.
The pleasure of reading about such things in the dramatic and fascinating form of science fiction gave me a push toward science that was irresistible. It was science fiction that made me want to be a scientist strongly enough to eventually make me one.
That is not to say that science fiction stories can be completely trusted as a source of specific knowledge ... However, the misguidings of science fiction can be unlearned. Sometimes the unlearning process is not easy, but it is a low price to pay for the gift of fascination over science. — Isaac Asimov

Each day Marda gets closer. The sub circles coral reefs off the coasts, where mermaids are said to like the colors of the schools of fishes, and train them to swim around their necks like jewelry or live behind their ears, beneath their long hair. Sometimes mermaids like shallow places, but mostly they like the dark and the beautiful, uncharted, abandoned, soulless parts of the undiscovered world. — Holly Walrath

This will sound crazy, but I'm saving it. For my nursing home list." "You mean bucket list." "Oh no, that's totally different. A nursing home list is a list of things you plan on reading and watching in a nursing home. A bucket list is more like . . . visit Nigeria, jump out of an airplane. A nursing home list is like, read The Western Coast and watch Pulp Fiction and listen to the latest Daft Punk album. — Caroline Kepnes

Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don't you feel it?"
I felt it. I took it easy. — Ross Macdonald

Here's a thought. You answer what I ask and I keep not killing you. - Antiope Flint - DREAMNASIUM — Geoffrey Thorne

Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or and people said: "Wait a minute, he's actually smart and he knows what he's doing!" I feel that with Hostel, any time you make a film like that it's going to illicit a strong reaction and you can't worry about that. — Eli Roth

I drive. That's what I do. All I do. — James Sallis

I will never do 'Pulp Fiction 2,' but having said that, I could very well do other movies with these characters. — Quentin Tarantino

The Quetzal Motel was a father/daughter operation, and they hurt for money but with just enough to stay in groceries. But who could tell? After tonight, their fortunes might perk up. It was better to look on the bright side. She took a deep breath and plunged back into Philip Nostrum's realm of futuristic
doings. — Ed Lynskey

You look at John Travolta in 'Pulp Fiction', you look at Donnie Wahlberg in 'The Sixth Sense.' People have liens against them in crazy ways and the audience is always forgiving - if you prove it. — Seth Green

Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions. — C. Wright Mills

There was an enormous revival of pulp fiction that started in the '60s and continued into the '70s, which in large part gave rise to things like 'Star Wars' and 'Indiana Jones,' among others. But I developed an appetite for the original stuff at the time, and that appetite has never really abated. — Chris Roberson

You read a script and its based on 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', and it goes right in the bin. — Tim Roth

You don't trust money to a junkie. You don't trust money to anyone with hard needs. — Walter Kaylin

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them. — Ving Rhames

I've got to think of a hundred and sixty million Americans, not of the three or four that happen to be the ones I love. And it wouldn't be a big thing - security is built on lots of little thing. I don't like to talk about it. (Calhoun Hightower in Danger for Breakfast) — John McPartland

Writing can be described in two verbs: Throw up and clean up. — Ray Bradbury

I loathe popular pulp, I loathe go-go gangs, I loathe jungle music, I loathe science fiction with its gals and goons, suspense and suspensories. I especially loathe vulgar movies - cripples raping nuns under tables, or naked-girl breasts squeezing against the tanned torsos of repulsive young males. And, really, I don't think I mock popular trash more often than do other authors who believe with me that a good laugh is the best pesticide. — Vladimir Nabokov

Walter Kaylin was great! He was outrageous, he just carried it off. He'd have this one guy killing a thousand other guys. Then they beat him into the ground, you think he's dead, but he rises up again and kills another thousand guys. — Mario Puzo

Havens turned again.
Someone else passed between the trucks.
That someone walked with less purpose than the other workers near the stalls. To Havens this meant a surveillance asset was on him and it probably was not an assassination attempt. It eased him back into relative comfort for just a moment or two more. — J.T. Patten

(I'm not online.) I don't have a fax. I don't go in for any of that stuff. The typewriter is as far as I went. — Walter Kaylin

I wouldn't define myself as the girl from 'Pulp Fiction.' — Maria De Medeiros

When one looks back across a chasm of seventy years, through a prism of pulp fiction and bad gangster movies, there is a tendency to view the events of 1933-34 as mythic, as folkloric. To the generations of Americans raised since World War II, the identities of criminals such as Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, "Ma" Barker, John Dillinger, and Clyde Barrow are no more real than are Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones. After decades spent in the washing machine of popular culture, their stories have been bled of all reality, to an extent that few Americans today know who these people actually were, much less that they all rose to national prominence at the same time. — Bryan Burrough

'Pulp Fiction' is my favorite movie of all time. — Paul Pierce

He was one of those men who can both get money and keep it. He must have been a millionaire. He kept accounts. He introduced a post-office atmosphere into his shady dealings. Not a stamp, not a pen-nib escaped him, and he would stay up half the night to figure out what had happened to a mislaid farthing. You cannot conceive the caution and the meanness of that man! He would have made a Syrian pawn-broker appear like Diamond Jim Brady. But he had brains, and also nerve. At the same time, he was as smooth as glycerine. He looked like an octopus - he had a dirtyish pallor, no shape, evil eyes, and a beak. In shaking hands with him, you felt that six or seven other hands were investigating your pockets while a dozen eyes watched you. He was feared. He made money out of everything. But he was still unknown to the police. — Gerald Kersh

Jules Winnfield: "ENGLISH, MOTHER FUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT!?"

Samuel L. Jackson — Quentin Tarantino

What distinguishes pulp fiction from great literature is how emphatically the work challenges us to interpret it. — Bruce Meyer

It's not highly intellectual material. I'm dedicating it to the pulp fiction of the past. — Bruce Boxleitner

To the secular arm, therefore, be delivered any and every book which, catering for the youngsters, throttles the life of the old folktales with coils of explanatory notes, and heaps on their maimed corpses the dead weight of biographical appendices. Nevertheless, that which delighted our childhood may instruct our manhood; and notes, appendices, and all the gear of didactic exposition, have their place elsewhere in helping the student, anxious to reach the seed of fact which is covered by the pulp of fiction. For, to effect this is to make approach to man's thoughts and conceptions of himself and his surroundings, to his way of looking at things and to explanation of his conduct both in work and play. Hence the folk-tale and the game are alike pressed into the service of study of the human mind. Turn where we may, the pastimes of children are seen to mimic the serious pursuits of men. — Edward Clodd

You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. — Mike Carey

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you — Anonymous

My best friend and I got the idea about two guys who don't get along, they're at each other's throats, but if they don't keep the business running, they're going to end up dead quickly. Plus, there's supernatural elements. We're excited. It's inspired by pulp fiction movies we've seen as kids. I don't care if we have a small audience; we just want to have a good time publishing it. — K. Guillory

I don't think Pulp Fiction is hard to watch at all. — Quentin Tarantino

The preliminaries were out of the way, the creative process was about to begin. The creative process, that mystic life force, that splurge out of which has come the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, the Fantasie Impromptu, the Bayeux tapestries, Romeo and Juliet, the windows of Chartres Cathedral, Paradise Lost - and a pulp murder story by Dan Moody. The process is the same in all; if the results are a little uneven, that doesn't invalidate the basic similarity of origin. — Cornell Woolrich

Her bosom filled the jacket like a pair of boxing gloves stuck inside it. — Walter Kaylin

'Pulp Fiction' is an amazing film, and I haven't made one nearly as good. — Martin McDonagh

I read anything I saw lying around. Pulp fiction, great literature and everything in between - I gave them all the same rough treatment. — Ian McEwan

Ruger's in there too. Hands covered in blood so they arrested him. He had to tackle your girl to get the gun away from her. She'd gone all Pulp Fiction on us, ready to defend you by killing all of us if she had to. Crouched over your body like Wonder Woman. Gives me a boner just thinking about it. — Joanna Wylde

The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the cheaper sort of sci-fi - though it is true that what holds for the most serious kind of fiction will generally hold for junk fiction as well. (Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It requires an authentic junk mind. Most creative-writing teachers have had the experience of occasionally helping to produce, by accident, a pornographer. The most elegant techniques in the world, filtered through a junk mind, become elegant junk techniques.) — John Gardner

Do I have to do everything myself?" The cry was a soul-freezing mixture of rage and torment. "Ain't there no one to stop asking questions and just do my bidding? By God, I'll kill and kill and kill and kill and never stop killing if people don't do what I say. I'll beat you dummies till the blood runs out of your eyes. I'll tie every man on this godforsaken island to a tree and he'll bark like a dog for me to throw him a bone. — Walter Kaylin

The line from Pulp Fiction - the one Samuel L. Jackson shouts at John Travolta as they're trying to wash blood off their hands - pops into my head: 'I used the same soap you did and when I dried my hands, the towel didn't look like no fuckin' maxi-pad!' I almost - almost - share this most quotable of cinematic quotes with him, when I remember it contains The Word. You know: 'maxi-pad. — Elle Lothlorien

In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero's shoulders and the heroine's balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel. — S.J Perelman

People tell me I live in the past. We all live in the past, I tell them, we just don't know it yet." ("Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me," Wild Card Press, 1995) — Will Viharo

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless. — Bruce Sterling

Every Friday, my dad would rent three videos. Me and my brother would ask for something with guns or fighting, but my dad would say, 'Come on, think about it.' He'd choose more involving films like 'Pulp Fiction,' and at the end of the night, we'd agree that they were great. — Christian Cooke

His agility surprised Phoebe Ash. She saw the plaster cast on his right leg. Funny messages in ink - "Go break the left one, tiger!" - had been written on the off-white plaster. — Ed Lynskey

All those years of lurid magazine covers showing extremely nubile females being menaced in three distinct colors by assorted monstrosities; those horror movies, those invasion-from-outer-space novels, those Sunday supplement fright splashes - all those sturdy psychological ruts I had to re-track. Not to mention the shudders elicited by mention of 'worms,' the regulation distrust of even human "furriners," the superstitious dread of creatures who had no visible place to park a soul.

("Betelgeuse Bridge) — William Tenn

Pulp Fiction is a, uh, gritty, urban satire. Pump Friction is a uh-uh, a bunch of uh, dudes and ladies having dirty sex. — Norm MacDonald

Bosch had left Nigeria with his infamous Butcher Boys - assorted sizes, shapes and colors, but all killers for a price - when his scheme to take over a native village backfired. He had figured on cleaning up by selling the village girls in the Congo but found himself dodging spears, knives and related items of cutlery instead. — Walter Kaylin

'Floating Worlds,' published in 1975 and the lone science fiction novel by acclaimed historical novelist Cecelia Holland, was unique in being completely devoid of the usual pulp influences present in much space opera up to that time. — Pamela Sargent

I'm asking about the kid," Root said. "What does she get out of it?"
"My fist in her ear if she asks as many questions as you do," Pennant said. "You worry too much. Well, what do you say, Sultan? — Walter Kaylin

I was watching 'Pulp Fiction' when we were making 'Now and Then'. I didn't care about 'Now and Then,' you know? — Gaby Hoffmann

I read anything I could get my hands on: science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers. I even became hooked on the Bantam reprints of the old pulp novels from thirties and forties: Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger. — James Rollins

Big beasties, swordplay, aliens, guns, ghosts, vampires, eldritch things from beyond and slime. A lot of slime. — William Meikle

I think, for sure, 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Pulp Fiction' were kind of bookends for - or the pillars of - my career. — John Travolta

That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.
There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thin gray ghosts, in a good cause; the mortality rate was terrible.
His train of thought, the story's lifeline, beer-lubricated but no whit impeded, flashed and sputtered and coursed ahead like lightning in a topaz mist, and the loose fingers and hiccuping keys followed as fast as they could. ("The Penny-A-Worder") — Cornell Woolrich

The fact that he gave her the creeps just proved she was normal. He had the flat, dead face of an item turned out by machines. His eyes were cold as marbles pressed into dough. His insides went with the surface. He could beat a man insane or take it himself, and it didn't mean a thing to him. — Walter Kaylin

I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds. — David S.Goyer

We live in a violent world, but since the success of films like Pulp Fiction, it seems every movie has some violence in it, and it's now being used as a form of comedy: audiences are now being encouraged to laugh when people get their heads blown off. I just don't like hearing people laugh at violence. — Natalie Portman

Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.
'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I'm too skeptical, but I can't take it too seriously.'
Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'
Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children's bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You're probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I'd hate to want to take that seriously.'
("The Venus Hunters") — J.G. Ballard

I edited that [men's adventure] stuff, I read it all. I went from that to The Saturday Evening Post. The very first day at the Post, I edited a piece by John O'Hara and Hannah Arendt. She said, 'Come on, vat are you doink?'

"I said, 'You're okay Arendt, but you're no Walter Kaylin. — Mel Shestack

Tono Phul used to entertain his guests by having the Filipino break two by fours in half with his karate chops. I saw him break a desk apart that way. Once, Tono Phul put him in a cage with an orangutan. The Filipino broke the ape's neck and then kicked it to death. He was the worst thing that ever came down the pike, and when Tono Phul had him tie me to a pool table and work me over, I was sure my time had come. — Walter Kaylin

Love was for dummies, soulmates were the creation of pulp-fiction writers; romance was craved by ageing, lonely cat owners. Successful relationships were built on rationality and compromise. — Karan Bajaj

'Pulp Fiction' blew my mind; beforehand, I'd watch films and there was a beginning, middle and an end, and that's it. There is in that film, too, but it's out of sequence. — Noel Clarke

I like stories about supervillains. They teach children that you can accomplish great things even when the whole world is against you. — G.D. Falksen

Along with death trek and survival stories, yarns about tough cops who had embarked on county cleanups were surefire; also guaranteed to please were pieces that had anything to do with islands - storming them, hiding out on them, buying them at bargain rates, becoming GI king of them. (My favorite, written by the great Walter Kaylin, had to do with a seaman who took charge of one and went about ruling it while sitting on the shoulders of a weird little chum with whom he had washed ashore.) — Bruce Jay Friedman

I wasn't trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. — Quentin Tarantino