Richie Lauthern > Richie's Quotes

“Buying loyalty can be as effective as fear when one’s rival is poorer than oneself.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“He says it was tourists being careless, where I see a fiendishly clever murder attempt.”
“Mr. McCarthy, you’d better explain.”
“Patrick, please. You’ll be tempted to laugh. It was a banana skin.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“Habit is necessary. It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive ... one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in the big things, and happy in small ways.”
― Edith Wharton

“The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings that normally we keep locked up in the heart.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong

“It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation. This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of the Courts and Ministers of Justice, or by military force; by the coercion of the magistracy, or by the coercion of arms. The first kind can evidently apply only to men: the last kind must, of necessity, be employed against bodies politic, or communities, or States.”
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way. I bet she's had a very sad life.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact