Shelley's Heart Quotes

“No use wasting Christian kisses on a heathen idol’s foot,” Mallory said.

“That must be Kipling,” Macalaster said.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“He stared at Mallory, who gave him a thin smile. Blackstone glanced at Mallory too, as if wondering how much more to say in his presence.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Mallory flashed the thin, quick humorless smile Blackstone had seen so often on television.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“When Lockwood gripped Mallory’s hand, the latter pressed a note into his callused palm. It was folded into a wad.

“Read that,” Mallory said. “I’ll wait for your call.” He turned on his heel and walked into the nave.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“The day was now extremely bright as the diagonal rays of the sun reflected from the film of unmelted snow that still stuck to the ground.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“He knew that there is no better place to have a private word with a President, who is never alone otherwise, than at a public event.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Eight years before, after a tumultuous election campaign, Mallory had defeated an inept and unpopular but liberal President by tactics that people like the dean regarded as kicking a man when he was down: he had pointedly ignored an appalling personal scandal that swirled round the incumbent and dwelled caustically on the man’s virtually unbroken string of disastrous policy mistakes. After one term, Mallory himself was defeated by Lockwood, and when he ran against Lockwood a second time, two months ago, he lost by the smallest margin of popular votes in history. After that, though he continued to loiter in the nightmares of those who deplored him, his image had vanished from the news media, reducing him overnight from the enormous dimensions of world repute to his original puny size and being, as if fame itself were a floppy disk that could be inserted into the collective consciousness or removed from it according to the whim of some Olympian computer operators.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“The dean of the cathedral, skeletal and bald, a fiftyish man with an anxious face that bore no marks of life whatsoever, recoiled when he saw Mallory approaching. He had come outside to welcome the President himself, never expecting that he would run into his worst political enemy. The dean’s manner was perfunctory—a damp handshake, a muttered “Mr., uh, Mallory,” but no smile, no eye contact.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Franklin Mallory, recognized the strains of Johann Sebastian Bach’s D minor toccata and fugue. Mallory found this famous work untidy and illogical and annoyingly reminiscent of Buxtehude—but then, organ music in general made him impatient. Like the rhetoric of his political enemies, it was overwrought.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“you’d better get rid of the idea that either one of us, or anyone else in this day and age, can appeal to the general interest, to patriotism or common sense, and achieve a result that’s in the best interests of the country.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“As of ten minutes ago, when he was sworn in by Albert Tyler in the President’s Room with the leadership of both houses of Congress as witnesses, that’s what he is.” Busby was staggered by the audacity of this maneuver by the Old Guard. “But how could something like this happen just like that, with no warning, out of the blue?” “Because we have a Constitution which delivers us from evil,”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“All but a few of those messages of concern to the Senate and much of the commentary in the news media had come from people who held radical beliefs with evangelical passion and would spring ferociously to their defense at the slightest sign that they were being questioned. Hammett knew their minds: Correctness was virtue; belief was personal validity; doctrine was truth. All else was evil.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“This did not mean that he had not been active in his own cause. On the contrary, he had been on the telephone all night, every night, feeding his advocates facts and phrases, suggesting sources of support and information, organizing telephone and mail campaigns, and above all guiding and nurturing journalists by reminding them, by tone of voice and vocabulary—though never in so many words—that he was the enemy of their enemies.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“What,” asked Julian without preamble, “did Trelawny snatch from the funeral pyre at Viareggio?” The go-between replied, “Shelley’s heart.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Nothing makes a man sound crazier than to describe what crazy people are trying to do to him.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“But the Viet Cong did horrible things,” she said. “The people who shot you down could have been the ones who massacred children, raped women, disemboweled village elders, couldn’t they? Such things happened in Vietnam.” “How do you know that? From more Republican books?” “Don’t condescend to me, Julian. You know it’s true. ” Julian said, “I’m not sure I do know that. But if such things were done by the V.C., there was always a political rationale. Always.” His features were once again in repose. “There was a ‘political rationale’?” Emily said. “That explains everything?” Julian had no chance to answer before the radio emitted some incomprehensible message from air traffic control that required him to respond. But for Julian, Emily realized, it did explain everything.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Eight years before, after a tumultuous election campaign, Mallory had defeated an inept and unpopular but liberal President by tactics that people like the dean regarded as kicking a man when he was down: he had pointedly ignored an appalling personal scandal that swirled round the incumbent and dwelled caustically on the man’s virtually unbroken string of disastrous policy mistakes.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart