Hard Aground Quotes

“He'd felt the same way some nights on patrol, hearing the jungle shift and creak around him in the dark. His head saying, go ahead, take your best shot, I'm not scared of you slanty-eyed buttwipes. And at the same time his heart was trying to parachute out his asshole.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground

“On land there was no choice. You conformed to the rigid structures others had left behind. But out there on the bay, it was different. Everything was fluid. Go here, go there. No signs, no narrow lanes, no walls, no paths worn into the water. Out there you were restricted only by the draft of your boat, your energy and will. Your imagination.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground

“You don't have any morals, do you, Senator? You're worse than me, do any fucking thing to get what you want." Against his chest she said, "Some people are chosen, Ray. I'm one of those. I make morals, I don't follow them." "I like that. You make morals. That's good." She said, "Morals are for the masses, the little people, to keep them from too much independent thinking.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground

“And damn it, looking at her, her eyes steady and unfazed, he had to admit that what he'd said, dangling there now in the warm night air, it sounded ludicrous. Like one of those things you harbor in some quiet passage of your mind, some private bias you conceal, feasting on it so long that it solidifies, and eventually seems indisputable, rock-hard belief. But the first time you put air to it, give it voice, the whole mountainous construction sounds so preposterous, so embarrassingly dumb, it completely evaporates.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground