"I'm so much happier now that I'm dead. Technically missing. Soon to be presumed dead. Gone. And my lazy lying shitting oblivious husband will go to prison for my murder. Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder. Let the punishment fit the crime."

"Everyone knows that 'complicated' is a code word for bitch."

"[to Amy] You. Fucking. Bitch."

"[Opening lines] When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, trying to get answers. The primal questions of a marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?"

"Amazing fucking Amy is getting fucking married!"

"[Last lines]What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?"

"I swear, you two are the most fucked up people I've ever known and I specialize in fucked up!"

"When two people love each other and they can't make that work, that's the real tragedy."

"Elvis is in Missouri!"

"Want to test your marriage for weak spots? Add one recession, subtract two jobs. It's surprisingly effective."

"Then Nick will die too. Nick and Amy will be gone, but then we never really existed. Nick loved a girl I was pretending to be; Cool Girl. Men always use that, don't they, as their defining compliment. She's a Cool Girl. Cool Girl is hot. Cool Girl is game. Cool Girl is fun. Cool Girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles, in a chagrined, loving manner, and then presents her mouth for fucking. She likes what he likes. So evidently, he's a vinyl hipster who likes fetish manga. If he likes girls gone wild, she's a mall babe, who talks football and endures Buffalo Wings at Hooter's. When I met Nick Dunne, I knew he wanted Cool Girl, and for him, I'll admit, I was willing to try. I wax-stripped my pussy raw. I drank canned beer watching Adam Sandler movies. I ate cold pizza and remained a size 2. I blew him, semi-regularly. I lived in the moment. I was fucking game. I can't say I didn't enjoy some of it. Nick teased out in me things I didn't know existed. A lightness. A humor. An ease. But I made him stronger, sharper. I inspired him to rise to my level. I forged the man of my dreams. We were happy pretending to be other people; we were the happiest couple we knew. And what's the point of being together if you're not the happiest? But Nick got lazy. He became someone I did not agree to marry. He actually expected me to love him unconditionally, then he dragged me, penniless, to the navel of this great country, and found himself a newer, younger, bouncier Cool Girl. You think I'd let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn't get to win."

"Blood red kisses! White hot thrills! Mickey Spillane's latest H-bomb!"

"I don't care what you do to me, Mike - just do it fast!"

"Genres collide in the great Hollywood movies of the midfifties cold-war thaw. With the truce in Korea and the red scare on the wane, ambitious directors seemed freer to mix and match and even ponder the new situation. The western goes south in The Searchers; the cartoon merges with the musical in The Girl Can’t Help It. Science fiction becomes pop sociology in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And noir veers into apocalyptic sci-fi in Robert Aldrich’s 1955 masterpiece Kiss Me Deadly, which, briefly described, tracks one of the sleaziest, stupidest, most brutal detectives in American movies through a nocturnal, inexplicably violent labyrinth to a white-hot vision of cosmic annihilation."

"Jerry Zinneman - Sammy"

"Leigh Snowden - Cheesecake"

"Cloris Leachman - Christina Bailey"

"Gaby Rodgers - Gabrielle (Lilly Carver)"

"Nick Dennis - Nick"

"Maxine Cooper - Velda"

"Juano Hernandez - Eddie Yeager"

"Wesley Addy - Lt. Pat Murphy"

"Jack Lambert - Sugar Smallhouse"

"Marian Carr - Friday"

"[to Hammer] Lie still. Why torment yourself? Who would you see? Someone you do not know, a stranger. What is it we are seeking? Diamonds, rubies, gold? Perhaps narcotics? How civilized this earth used to be. But as the world becomes more primitive, its treasures become more fabulous. Perhaps sentiment will succeed where greed failed. You will die, Mr. Hammer. But your friend, you can save her. Yes you can. The young lady you picked up on the highway. She wrote you a letter. In it were two words: 'Remember Me.' She asks you to remember. What is it you must remember? [he injects Hammer with a hypodermic needle full of sodium pentothal] And while you sleep, your subconscious will provide the answer. And you will cry out what it is that you must remember. Pleasant dreams, Mr. Hammer."

"Ralph Meeker - Mike Hammer"

"Albert Dekker - Dr. G.E. Soberin"

"Kiss me, Mike. I want you to kiss me. Kiss me. The liar's kiss that says 'I love you.' It means something else. You're good at giving such kisses. Kiss me."

"Paul Stewart - Carl Evello"

"What’s in it for me?"

"Jack Elam - Charlie Max"

"I'll make a quick guess: You were out with a guy who thought “no” was a three-letter word."

"I should have thrown you off that cliff back there. I might still do it."

"Alright, you convinced me - I’m a real stinker."

"I always wanted to be in the movies. When I was little I thought for sure I could be a big, big star. Or maybe just beautiful. Beautiful and rich, like the women on TV. Yeah, I had a lot of dreams, and I guess you could call me a real romantic, because I truly believed that one day, they'd come true. So I dreamed about it for hours. As the years went by I learned to stop sharing this with people. They said I was dreaming, but back then, I believed in it wholeheartedly. So whenever I was down, I would just escape into my mind. To my other life, where I was someone else. It made me happy to think that all these people just didn't know yet who I was gonna be. But one day, they'd all see."

"I heard that Marilyn Monroe was discovered in a soda shop, and I thought for sure it could be like that. So I started going out real young, and I was always secretly looking for who was gonna discover me. Was it this guy? Or maybe this one? You never knew. But even if they couldn't take me all the way, like Marilyn, they would somehow believe in me just enough. They could see me for what I could be, and think I was beautiful. Like a diamond in the rough. They would take me away to my new life, and my new world, where everything would be different. Yeah. I lived that way for a long, long time. In my head, dreaming like that. It was nice. But one day it just stopped."

"By the time I met Selby Wall... Shit, all I wanted was a beer."

"Lee Tergeson - Richard Corey"

"Annie Corley - Donna"

"Monster at imdb.com"

"Bruce Dern - Thomas"