Living nightmare Quotes

“The jungle is alive. It’s dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility.”

“Don’t let your day dreams become your personally living nightmare.”

“Thomas remembered the image of the Cranks at the windows back at the dorm. Like living nightmares, missing only a death certificate to make them official zombies.”

“One wrong social move---say---like hanging with the wrong person,” she said nastily, “Can make your life around here a living nightmare and I definitely don’t think that you want that.”

“The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me."Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!""You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him.”

“The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.("Introduction")”

“I don't like it, but my hands are tied. I just want you to know this: if I ever get the chance to betray you, I will. If the opportunity arises to pay you back, I'll take it. You'll never be able to trust me.”

“He says every story has at least some truth in it, even if most are made up.”

“Even in death, may you be triumphant”