In Cold Blood Quotes Flashcards
Prison in prison
There stands a curious little building: a dark two-storied building shaped like a coffin. This establishment…constitutes a prison inside a prison.
Perry O’Parson defecating
Perry O’Parsons, “The One-Man Symphony,” returned in the guise of a recurrent dream…there was no applause, none, and yet thousands of patrons packed the vast and gaudy room…his top hat tumbled; urinating, defecating, Perry O’Parsons entered eternity.
Mention he tap dances and plays the guitar, harmonica, banjo, and the drums
Rain
It is easy to avoid the rain if you have a raincoat
Rich and hang
The rich never hang only the poor and friendless
Younger photo
He thanked me and gave me a picture of himself. A little Kodak made when he was sixteen years old. He said it was how he wanted me to remember him, like the boy in the picture.
Mirage
Perry Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another.
Diamond tree
Thus, the snake, that custodian of the diamond bearing tree, never finished devouring him but was itself always devoured…Ascension to a paradise that in one version was merely “a feeling,” a sense of power, of unassailable superiority…
Crying like a child
Crying like a child…Well, I went to him. The door of his cell. He reached out his hand. He wanted me to hold his hand, and I did, I held his hand…
Dick and the dogs
It was an old half-dead mongrel, brittle-boned and mangy, and the impact, as it met the car, was little more than what a bird might make. But Dick was satisfied. “Boy!” he said…which was something he did whenever the opportunity arose. “Boy! We sure splattered him!”
Dick and church
Though as a child he had attended church, Dick had never “come near” a belief in God; nor was he troubled by superstitions.
Perry and church
…Though he was contemptuous of any exhibition of piety, felt “upset” when he heard Willie-Jay sing “The Lord’s Prayer”; the hymn’s grave language sung in so credulous a spirit moved him, made him wonder a little at the justice of his contempt.
Dick with his family at home
…In the pleasant kitchen of a modest farmhouse, Dick was consuming a Sunday dinner… He had arrived home at noon, kissed his mother…seeming quite his ordinary self.
Chewing gum + hundred dollars
I’m a thief too, but only if I don’t have the money to pay. Dick, if he was carrying a hundred dollars in his pocket, he’d steal a stick of chewing gum.”
Jesus painting
The Reverend Post, overhearing the conversation, joined in…‘Any man who could paint this picture can’t be one hundred percent bad. All the same it’s hard to know what to do.’
Nye seeing Perry
Nye, who was seeing Smith for the first time, was fascinated by his feet - by the fact that his legs were so short that his feet, as small as a child’s, couldn’t quite make the floor.
