Jonathan > Jonathan's Quotes

“Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Somewhere in the ocean, a shark was missing its cold eyes because this man had them.”
― Steve Hamilton, The Lock Artist

“Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.”
― John D. MacDonald

“So that's troublin' you? I reckon it needn't. You see it was this way. I come round the house an' seen that fat party an' heard him talkin' loud. Then he seen me, an' very impolite goes straight for his gun. He oughtn't have tried to throw a gun on me - whatever his reason was. For that's meetin' me on my own grounds. I've seen runnin' molasses that was quicker'n him. Now I didn't know who he was, visitor or friend or relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an' I couldn't get serious about shootin'. So I winged him - put a bullet through his arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he droppped the gun there, an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himself sufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' went" - Lassiter”
― Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage

“And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.”
― Alan Furst, Spies of the Balkans

“Windows were broken. Where not broken they were boarded up, had been for years: the rust from nailheads had written long, sad farewells down the salt-silvered planks.”
― Joseph Hansen, Fadeout

“I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“Everything changed, and eleven months later, here I was in the middle of the night with a gungho major, playing secret agent, hoping some Frenchie didn't put a bullet in my skull before I gave the Germans and Italians their chance.”
― James R. Benn, The First Wave

“Except for a roll of Harding's eyes, everyone ignored me, which is the way I liked it when I had to hang around with senior officers. They had a way of thinking up ideas that got you killed and them promoted.”
― James R. Benn, The First Wave

“The Other Him gave a creepy look that bordered on pity. Oh, you poor baby. Which was surreel. Was that what Hradie looked like when he was trying to look sympathetic? No wonder everybody seemed to want to punch him in the face.”
― Duane Swierczynski, Point & Shoot

“Nor did she merely smile, she glowed with inner goodness that made him think of the vast iron cookstove in his grandmother's kitchen back on the farm. Here, he knew by certain instinct, was a woman who made wonderful cookies and would give you some.”
― Charlotte MacLeod, The Luck Runs Out

“Colonel Bulder, in full military uniform, on horseback, galloping first to one place and then to another, and backing his horse among the people, and prancing, and curvetting, and shouting in a most alarming manner, and making himself very hoarse in the voice, and very red in the face, without any assignable cause or reason whatever.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“    'It wasn't the wine,' murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. 'It was the salmon.' (Somehow or other, it never is the wine, in these cases.)”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“he had offered some of his own background. A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Doc

“She was wearing something in purple suede that was too short for a skirt and too long for a belt.”
― Robert B. Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript

“At least that was what she had told me. You never know with women. What they tell you and what they don't tell you is a very long bridge across a very wide river with all kinds of fish.”
― Philip Kerr

“Dalia picked up her negligee. She didn't need my help, it wasn't very heavy.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“Looking at him I felt as if I had just met a powerful gorilla while at the same time being in possession of the world's last banana.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“Roberts knocked, heard: ‘Enter.’ Thought: ‘Wanker.”
― Ken Bruen, A White Arrest

“He missed two people: a) the girl she was; b) the person she’d made him feel he might have been. A deep sigh escaped him.”
― Ken Bruen

“Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“He gave me a small, secretive smile, a smile that said he knew many things but couldn’t share them all at once.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“Kolya was a braggart, a know-it-all, a Jew-baiting Cossack, but his confidence was so pure and complete it no longer seemed like arrogance, just the mark of a man who had accepted his own heroic destiny.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“Don’t worry, my friend. I won’t let you die.”

I was seventeen and stupid and I believed him.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“blue eyes so light that it looked like she sent them out to be bleached”
― James Ellroy

“It made me uncomfortable. I guess I've always been afraid of people who can be agile without grace.”
― Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?