Thomas Perry > Quotes

“I love you' is what people say when they have run out of words and can't say anything else. It is like reaching out a hand in desperation.”
― Thomas Perry

“Bombs were not just weapons. They were something more, expressions of the bomber's thoughts about you, his predictions of your behavior - what you would see, even what you would think and feel. He'd staged a presentation designed to fool you. He didn't even know your name, but you were the one he was really after. Bombs were acts of murder, but they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you, chances for you to pick wrong when it was almost impossible to pick right.”
― Thomas Perry

“Holy shit! It wasn't them; it was him!”
― Thomas Perry, Sleeping Dogs

“All dogs wanted to be good dogs, no matter how unpromising they seemed. You just had to help them find a way.And they were sunshine creatures. When their master opened his eyes in the morning it was their signal that the day had begun, and a day was to be greeted with joy and intense interest.”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“same”
― Thomas Perry, A String of Beads

“People take charge and then you find out what they wanted power for.”
― Thomas Perry, Eddie's Boy

“The women sang the Ohgiwe and danced together as the grandmothers had, for the brave, and the unselfish, for the protectors.”
― Thomas Perry, Dance for the Dead

“Nobody in any intelligence organization had any particular attachment to the truth. The truth was just one of many versions that was not necessarily superior to any of the other versions.”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“the sort of books that cost too much unless you got them free.”
― Thomas Perry, Metzger's Dog

“Some people are born where they belong, and some have to find their way there,”
― Thomas Perry, A String of Beads

“Question asked of Thomas Perry.
What is the most important thing
that you have learned in your writing experience, so far?
"If any writer is going to be remembered after he’s gone, it will be for the parts of his work that are absolutely original, and would never have existed if he hadn’t written them. So if you’re writing a scene that you’ve read, watched, or heard before, then you’re wasting your time and your reader’s.”
― Thomas Perry

“know”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“repetition. Things”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“When you’re dead, the way death got you is just one thing that happened among thousands. You don’t care more about that day than any of the others, just because it was the last day. You’ll see.”
― Thomas Perry, Poison Flower

“First you and I are going to share a piece of lemon meringue pie. It's a life lesson I learned recently. You never know when you'll get your next lemon meringue, so now is a good time.”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“The enemy in retirement was that nothing you did seemed to cause you to look forward to anything. Weekends were the same as weekdays, and payday was just a notice from your bank that the check had arrived as usual.”
― Thomas Perry, Blood Money

“You may not have noticed, but men over retirement age seem to have a lot of clothes of an earlier vintage.” “Yep,” he said. “We’re all timing it to wear them out at the moment of death so everything comes out even.”
― Thomas Perry, The Face-Changers

“Marriages were more fragile and complicated than she had ever imagined. Trouble came in quiet, unexpected ways. Things had to be said over and over again, all existing agreements renewed and clarified.”
― Thomas Perry, Blood Money

“The Old People believed that the place to obtain secret information was in dreams. Sometimes a dream would be an expression of an unconscious desire of the soul, and at other times a message planted there by a guardian spirit. Those were two ways of saying the same thing. If there were such a force as the supernatural, then the soul and the guardian both would be supernatural. If there were no such force, then the soul was the psyche, and the guardian spirit was just the lonely mind’s imaginary friend.”
― Thomas Perry, Dance for the Dead

“They’d be sitting somewhere out of sight waiting for him to turn the key and blow himself into a hundred thousand spoonfuls of hamburger.”
― Thomas Perry, The Butcher's Boy

“All dogs wanted to be good dogs, no matter how unpromising they seemed. You just had to help them find a way. And they were sunshine creatures. When their master opened his eyes in the morning it was their signal that the day had begun, and a day was to be greeted with joy and intense interest.”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“thought she was his beard, but she was”
― Thomas Perry, Eddie's Boy

“He runs a crew that’s been doing real-estate scams in Florida. They’d buy and sell the same house four or five times among themselves to jack up the price, take out a giant mortgage, and then walk away. That worked in boom times when houses were going up. Now they’re taking money to prevent foreclosures. The victim signs his house over to them.”
― Thomas Perry, The Informant

“had gone to Europe and always told people they were Canadian to avoid political hatred. Everybody liked Canadians.”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

“There was no such thing as a prayer of supplication in the old religion, only ways of giving thanks.”
― Thomas Perry, Shadow Woman

“she sprayed the inside of the car with the fire extinguisher and tossed it on the floor in the back seat, left the keys in the ignition, and walked away. “What was that for?” asked Pete. “The spray is just carbon dioxide. It’ll be gone in a little while, but so will the fingerprints. If somebody traces the plates, they’ll have a problem because the car’s not registered in Colorado. It might buy us some time to make them trace it in other states.”
― Thomas Perry, Shadow Woman

“Running a bath for him wasn’t a normal thing for a suicidal girl to do,”
― Thomas Perry, Dead Aim

“People who like to hurt you can always tell you why it’s your fault.”
― Thomas Perry, Poison Flower

“The sergeant opened the gun safe and put her belongings inside, as the nearly 150-year tradition of Weldonville demanded. Firearms had never been allowed in the city council chamber.”
― Thomas Perry, A Small Town

“Marriages are fragile. When you boil off all the nonsense, what they amount to is a promise.”
― Thomas Perry, Shadow Woman