Unnatural Death Quotes

“Reflecting”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Carrie in my backyard. “Allow me to do the honors.” Benton picks up the pizza cutter”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Pepper the drone”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“instantiation”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“My little bird should not have this unhappiness and responsibility at such a tender age,”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“When tunnels and shafts were blasted through granite during the early eighteen hundreds, there was no record of it, Benton explains as I fight to stay awake. “Not a written description or hand-drawn map. Nothing at all that an enemy nation could get its hands on.” His voice drones on soothingly. “And this is where Wild World’s seaplane fits in. It’s not a coincidence it started flying around the Buckingham Run area at the same time the Mansons began camping there.” The Twin Otter is equipped with lidar and ground-penetrating radar. It’s been gathering coordinates and images for the Chinese, who are capable of spying with more than just high-altitude balloons, Benton says. The obvious goal is knowing the lay of the land in hopes that one day the enemy will discover a vulnerability, a way to breach what will seem untouchable.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Vitruvian, as in the Roman architect and Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Symbolic of universal connection, the computer system would be housed deep underground, surrounded by solid granite inside uninhabited forestland.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“He explains that the old gold mine inside Buckingham Run is a subterranean labyrinth twice the size of the Pentagon and destined to become a similar facility. It’s increasingly commonplace to repurpose mines no longer used, and there are thousands of them around the world. The tunnels and shafts are turned into multilevel hotels, amusement parks, farms where the produce can be perfectly controlled.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“We can’t give her that power. She’d like nothing better than to have us at each other’s throats.” “Destroy from within. That’s what the enemy does.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“I don’t think you know how I feel. Because I’m not sure I do. I’m still trying to make sense of everything I’ve learned today.” I pet Merlin. “It’s redefined my entire universe.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“You can duplicate the software, but it won’t work as long as the original exists and is online,” Lucy is saying. “And the original has been corrupted. What this means is Bad Janet is in charge and she wants to keep it that way. I don’t have the power to replace her with an earlier uncorrupted version.” “We can’t reinstall Good Janet until we somehow delete the bad one,” Tron explains. “And as we speak only the hijacker can do that.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Bocca della Verità!”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“evidence doesn’t lie. But people do.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“He looked perfectly put together and unflappably in control while I choked on betrayal I’m not supposed to acknowledge or even notice. I’m expected to be fine with the rules somehow. I’m not this time! He should have put me first. It may not be logical or right, but I’m not married to the goddamn government. You should have told me! “Hello in there?”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Hurt. Enraged. Naïve. Even stupid. And shaky inside.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“She has endless legs and big ideas,”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“I won’t be distracted by her. I won’t give her my emotional energy. Even as I’m telling myself this my fury borders on the homicidal, and I resent anyone having that much power. I try very hard not to hate. It disturbs me”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“The Secret Service began at the end of the Civil War when as much as a third of American currency was counterfeit. The head of the Treasury Department convinced President Abraham Lincoln that an enforcement division was critical. Executive protection wasn’t the reason. Saving the nation’s financial system was, and on April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed the bill creating the U.S. Secret Service. That night he and the first lady had no bodyguard while attending a raucous comedy at Ford’s Theatre less than a mile from the White House. As the audience laughed uproariously, Lincoln was shot to death inside his private booth. “Our”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“all of us are conditioned to shield our personal lives as much as possible. If the wrong people detect what you care about most, it gives them power.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“I don’t like fights, rarely start them and wish they weren’t necessary or inevitable. My niece is fired up when challenged, daring someone to take her on. Her attitude is make my day as she ruins yours.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Lucy is calm, almost peaceful, the two of us wired differently.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Sucker hole,” Lucy reminds him. “A diversion that prevents you from seeing what’s really going on. That’s the danger. Not whether it’s real or not.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Out of necessity she’s developed an ability to multitask that’s uncanny. But it’s not easy getting her undivided attention.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“I’m reminded of her teenaged years when she and Marino constantly sparred with each other even as they were best friends. He was the uncle, the father figure she never had. He also was bigoted and backward, the two of them everything that threatened the other.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“chiaroscuro”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“carabiners”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“People tend to die the way they lived.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“I imagine what Benton might say about emotions left behind like an echo or an odor. Contempt, rage and arrogance come to mind. A need to annihilate and degrade, I’d add to the list. Also, to shock, to terrify, and I know what Lucy means about hatred. That’s here too. I feel it like an undertow.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Pepper, hunt…” The drone lifts up… up… up… a hundred feet, two hundred and more. Clearing the trees, it levels off, sailing away.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death

“Pepper, start.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Unnatural Death