About Cornell Woolrich: Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley.
I saw her sign the register, but her name isn't on it any more. The bellboy says he never saw her. Now they've got me so I'm scared and shaky, like a little kid is of the dark. I want you men to help me. Won't you men help me?' 'We'll help you' - sai...
I took a few dragging steps toward the locker-room door. 'You're doing something to me that I wouldn't do to a dog,' I mumbled. 'What you're doing to me is worse than if you were to kill me. You're locking me up in shadows for the rest of my life. Yo...
There was a pause, while I fought against this other, lesser kind of death that was creeping over me - this death called strangeness, this snapping of all the customary little threads of cause and effect that are our moorings at other times. Slowly t...
It was a brave city, she decided, eyeing them. Brave in its other sense; not courageous, so much as outstanding, commanding. It was too nice a town to die in. Though it had no honeysuckle vines and no balconies and no guitars, it was meant for love. ...
There is no hard and fast line that can be drawn that says: Up to here there was no love; from here on there is now love. Love is a gradual thing, it may take a moment, a month, or a year to come on, and in each two its gradations are different. With...
Babette looked too good for the place tonight, but then goodness is only relative after all ("Steps Going Up" aka "Guillotine" aka "Men Must Die")
And then finally she came - and the whole world faded out around us and we were just alone on the crowded sidewalk. I've heard it called love. ("I Won't Take a Minute" aka "I'll Just Be a Minute" aka "Wait for Me Downstairs" aka "Finger Of Doom")
She was beautiful, only hers was the dark beauty of night, just as Sherry's was the bright beauty of daytime. Her hair was raven-black, ending in a sort of widow's peak low on her forehead, and her face and arms were alabaster- white. Her gown was a ...
I didn't look over my shoulder; there wasn't a sound behind me on the pavement, but I knew he was coming slowly after me. The crawl of the skin up and down my back told me. Little needles of warning that gathered at the back of my skull told me. I'd ...
He should have caught up with me inside of fifteen minutes at the outside, if he'd been able to get on the next train after mine. But then there was that station agent to be considered. And Rafe didn't have a solitary coin on him; he'd have to break ...
Being broke didn't seem so awful as it had yesterday, being broke but being at peace with the world. ("Don't Wait Up For Me Tonight")
The ride had begun. The theatre and club spectaculars seemed to stick up into the sky at all sorts of crazy angles, probably because most of them were planted diagonally on rooftops. Follow Thru, Whoopee, Show Boat, El Fay Club, Club Richman, Texas G...
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 an...
Then without any warning the car stopped. They were there. "The ride's over," someone said. "End of the ride." For a moment nobody got out. They just sat there. The driver cut the ignition, and after that there was silence. Complete, uncanny silence,...
Gosh, it's easy!' he marveled, open-mouthed. 'I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow 'em, and all it takes is one little push!' He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The po...
I hate the world. Everything comes into it so clean and goes out so dirty. (from COVER CHARGE - currently not listed)
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...
Stahl trailed him upstairs, across a mezzanine, and out into the darkness of the sloping balcony. Tom gave the aisle his torch so his guest could see. On the screen below a woman's head was wavering, two or three times larger than life. A metallic vo...
After that there was silence for a while, only the sound of the shovel biting into the earth and the hissing splatter of the loose dirt. They stood him up, his back to the well. In the dark, desperate sky, just above the scalloped line the treetops m...
You'd be surprised how difficult it is to ask alms of a stranger when you've never done it before, what a psychological barrier separates the honest man from the panhandler. ("Dusk To Dawn")
