Waltz into Darkness Quotes

“No desolation equal to that of the pagan, suddenly bereft. For to the pagan, there is no hereafter.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“...what is cruelty but the giving of pain in the taking of pleasure?”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The house was two stories in height. It was of buff brick, with white trim about the windows and the doorway. It was not large, but it occupied an extremely advantageous position. It sat on a corner plot, so that it faced both ways at once, without obstruction. Moreover, the ground-plot itself extended beyond the house, if not lavishly at least amply, so that it touched none of its neighbors. There was room left for strips of sod in the front, and for a garden in the back.

It was not, of course, strictly presentable yet. There were several small messy piles of broken, discarded bricks left out before it, the sod was not in place, and the window glass was smirched with streaks of paint. But something almost reverent came into the man’s face as he looked at it. His lips parted slightly and his eyes softened. He hadn’t known there could be such a beautiful house. It was the most beautiful house he had ever seen. It was his.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“A waltz for life,” she whispered raptly. “A waltz with wings. A waltz never ending. A waltz in the sunlight, a waltz in azure, in gold—and in spotless white.”
― William Irish, Waltz into Darkness

“Scorning to raise hand to the portal himself, possibly under the conviction that it was not fitting for a man to have to knock at the door of his own house, he tried the knob, found it unlocked, and entered. There was on the inside the distinctive and not unpleasant—and in this case enchanting—aroma a new house has, of freshly planed wood, the astringent turpentine in paint, window putty, and several other less identifiable ingredients.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like: “She ain’t going have much time spend smelling flowers.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“His back was to her. He stood before a table; simply because it happened to be there in the way. His hands were planted flat upon it at each side, and he was leaning slightly forward over it. As if peering intently into vistas of the future, that no one but he could see.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“THE RIVER was empty, the sky was clear. Both were mirrored in his anxious, waiting eyes.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Tears filled his eyes, and though there was no one near him, no one to notice, he slowly lowered his head to keep them from being detected.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Then without a sound of approach, the rounded shadow of a small head advanced timorously across it; cast from somewhere behind him, rising upward from below. A neck, two shoulders, followed it. Then the graceful indentation of a waist.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“There was the light touch of a hand upon his shoulder. No exacting weight, no compulsive stroke; velvety and gossamer as the alighting of a butterfly.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“A figure swept around before him, as on a turntable, pivoting to claim the center of his eyes; though it was he and not the background that had shifted.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Her limpid brown eyes came up to the turn of Durand’s shoulder. Her face held an exquisite beauty he had never before seen, the beauty of porcelain, but without its cold stillness, and a crumpled rose petal of a mouth.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“She was no more than in her early twenties, and though her size might have lent her added youth, the illusion had very little to subtract from the reality.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Tight-spun golden curls clung to her head like a field of daisies, rebelling all but successfully at the conventional coiffure she tried to impose upon them.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The compressed mouth curved in winsome smile. “You don’t know me, do you, Mr. Durand?”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The compressed mouth curved in winsome smile. “You don’t know me, do you, Mr. Durand?”
He shook his head slightly. The smile notched a dimple; rose to her eyes. “I’m Julia, Louis. May I call you Louis?”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“When a man’s in love, he looks for looks. When a lady’s in love, ’scusing me, Mr. Lou, she looks to see how well-off she’s going to be.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Well, I have to see, don’t I? Do you think she’ll like pink roses and sweet peas, Tom?” There was a plaintive helplessness to the last part of the question, as when one grasps at straws.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“A man in love is a man in a hurry”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The sun suddenly whitened his back like flour as he leaned over the railing, pressing down the smouldering magenta bougainvillea that feathered its edges.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The boy of twenty-two died into a young man of twenty-nine. Then he in turn was still faithful to the name his predecessor had been faithful to, until he too died. The young man of twenty-nine died into an older man of thirty-six.

And suddenly, one day, the cumulative loneliness of fifteen years, held back until now, overwhelmed him, all at one time, inundated him, and he turned this way and that, almost in panic.

Any love, from anywhere, on any terms. Quick, before it was too late! Only not to be alone any longer.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Marguerite, a name. That was all he had left.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“He didn’t cry out. He made no sound. He reached down and placed his courtship flowers gently on the death-stretcher as it went by. Then he turned and went away.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“She was not beautiful. She could be called attractive, for she was attractive to him, and attractiveness lies in the eyes of the beholder.
That early love, that first love (that he had sworn would be the last) was only a shadowy memory now, a half-remembered name from the past. Marguerite; he could say it and it had no meaning now. As dry and flat as a flower pressed for years between the pages of a book. A name from someone else’s past, not even his. For every seven years we change completely, they say, and there is nothing left of what we were.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The subject was not young. She was not an old woman, certainly, but she was equally certainly no longer a girl. Her features were sharply indented with the approaching emphases of alteration. There was an incisiveness to the mouth that was not yet, but would be presently, sharpness. There was a keen appearance to the eyes that heralded the onset of sunken creases and constrictions about them. Not yet, but presently. The groundwork was being laid. There was a curvature to the nose that presently would become a hook. There was a prominence to the chin that presently would become a jutting-out.
She was not beautiful. She could be called attractive, for she was attractive to him, and attractiveness lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“For what was a man without a watch? And what was a watch without there being an indication of one?”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“On the wall there was a calendar, the first four leaves peeled back to bare the fifth. At top, center, this was inscribed May. Then on each side of this, in slanted, shadow-casting, heavily curlicued numerals, the year-date was gratuitously given the beholder: 1880.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Louis Durand was getting dressed. Not for the first time that day, for the sun was already high and he’d been up and about for hours; but for the great event of that day. This wasn’t just a day, this was the day of all days. A day that comes just once to a man, and now had come to him. It had come late, but it had come. It was now. It was today.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“THE SUN was bright, the sky was blue, the time was May; New Orleans was heaven, and heaven must have been only another New Orleans, it couldn’t have been any better.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness