How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I didn't realize what I'd done until I'd heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water. (3.486)
This is Perry's first-hand account of dissociation: the experience of doing something in an altered state of consciousness, like an out-of-body thing. It's one explanation for how somebody who admittedly thought the Clutters were nice people—he even chatted with Nancy for a while on her bed—could then go on to methodically kill each of them. Or, he could be making this up.
Quote #8
One deceived salesman said, "He [Hickock] did the work. A very smooth talker, very convincing." (3.25)
Charming and deceiving—he's great at it. That's why he's such a good paperhanger. (Impress your friends with this cool, in-the-know word for someone who passes bad checks.)
Quote #9
[Dick] was sorry he felt as he did about her [a twelve-year-old girl], for his sexual interest in female children was a failing of which he felt "sincerely ashamed" [. . .] because other people might not think it normal. That [being normal] was something he was sure he was [. . .] Seducing pubescent girls, as he had done "eight or nine" times in the past several years, did not disprove it, for, if the truth were known, most real men had the same desires he had. (3.203)
Do you think most real men have sexual thoughts about 12 year-olds? It's hard to believe Dick is "sincerely ashamed" if he says that. The murders of the Clutter family may have been a byproduct of Dick's sexual perversion. He admits that he stuck around the Clutter house mostly to rape Nancy, and that he'd been thinking about this since he first heard from Floyd Wells about the family. Otherwise, he may have left after discovering there was no money there.