A second red-orange spearhead leaps straight at O'Shagginess. The whole world seems to stand still. Then the gun behind it crashes, and there's a cataclysm of pain all over him, and a shock goes through him as if he ran head-on into a stone wall. A voice from the car says blurred, while the ground rushes up to meet him, 'Finish him up, you guys! I'm getting, so I don't trust their looks no more, no matter how stiff they act!' ("Jane Brown's Body")

— Cornell Woolrich

A slight concussion of the brain simplifies matters so beautifully.("Three O'Clock")

— Cornell Woolrich

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")

— Cornell Woolrich

Business after all is a form of warfare; you bring all your available weapons to bear. If you don't, you're a fool. ("Jane Brown's Body")

— Cornell Woolrich

But it doesn't happen that way, I keep telling myself knowingly and sadly. Only in our fraternity pledges and masonic inductions, our cowboy movies and magazine stories, not in our real-life lives. For, the seventeenth-century humanist to the contrary, each man is an island complete unto himself, and as he sinks, the moving feet go on around him, from nowhere to nowhere and with no time to lose. The world is long past the Boy Scout stage of its development; now each man dies as he was meant to die, and as he was born, and as he lived: alone, all alone. Without any God, without any hope, without any record to show for his life.("New York Blues")

— Cornell Woolrich

But that's the Way, and there is no other. And once his mind's made up, the trembling and aimless walking stops, and he can look doom in the face without flinching. ("Jane Brown's Body")

— Cornell Woolrich

But there are three things in this world you can’t shrug off: death, taxes – and a girl who loves you.

— Cornell Woolrich

Evans turned away, did something with his left eyelid for the benefit of the other two. "It's got him," he smirked. "He's tuned-in from now on." Time started to slow up and act crazy. Minutes took much longer to pass than they had before. It was hard for him to adjust himself to the new ratio, he got all balled-up. When it seemed like half an hour had gone by, the radio would still be playing only the first chorus of the same selection that had begun a good thirty minutes before. Otherwise, nothing much happened. Minnie was doing a good deal of muffled giggling over there on the divan. The stranger who had been sitting reading the paper got up, yawned, stretched ponderously, and strolled out into the hall, with a muttered "Happy landing!" by way of leave-taking. He didn't come back again anymore. Turner looked down one time and a quarter of an inch of charred paper was all that was left between his fingers. Then the next time he looked there was a full length cigarette again.

— Cornell Woolrich

Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether it is ordered and ordained, fixed and fated, or whether it can be missed, avoided, circumvented, passed by; that is the mystery. If she had not come along the Via Piedmont that day, would it still have happened? If she had come along the Via Piedmont that day, but ten minutes later than she did, would it still have happened? Therein lies the real mystery. And no one ever knows, and no one ever will.("For The Rest Of Her Life")

— Cornell Woolrich

Extreme joy and extreme sorrow are indistinguishable beyond a certain point. ("Jane Brown's Body")

— Cornell Woolrich