The Power of the Dog Quotes

“You don’t let them knock you out, you make them knock you out. You make them break their fucking hands knocking you out, you let them know that they’ve been in a fight, you give them something to remember you by every time they look in a mirror.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without
them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“This is Tío’s genius—he knows that a man who would never have the weakness to set a great evil into motion doesn’t have the strength to stop it once it’s moving. That the hardest thing in the world isn’t to refrain from committing an evil, it’s to stand up and stop one.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“And the most dangerous place on earth— Is where you’re safe.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Art can’t decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it’s a tragic, bloody farce.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Deliver my soul from the sword. My love from the power of the dog.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Six bad hombres have tried to kill Ramos. Ramos went to all six funerals, just in case any of the bereaved wanted to take a shot at revenge. None of them did. He calls his Uzi “Mi Esposa”—my wife. He’s thirty-two years old. Within hours he has in custody the three policemen who picked up Ernie Hidalgo. One of them is the chief of the Jalisco State Police. Ramos tells Art, “We can do this the fast way or the slow way.” Ramos takes two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one to Art and shrugs when he refuses it. He takes a long time to light the cigar, rolling it so that the tip lights evenly, then takes a long pull and raises his black eyebrows at Art. The theologians are right, Art thinks—we become what we hate. Then he says, “The fast way.” Ramos says. “Come back in a little while.” “No,” Art says. “I’ll do my part.” “That’s a man’s answer,” Ramos says. “But I don’t want a witness.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“All this and the wine's coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan’s about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.” 
One motherfuck of an essay question.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences, Art thinks as he watches the federales. Operation Condor was intended to cut the Sinaloan cancer out of Mexico, but what it did instead was spread it through the entire body. And you have to give the Sinaloans credit—their response to their little diaspora was pure genius. Somewhere along the line they figured out that their real product isn’t drugs, it’s the two-thousand-mile border they share with the United States, and their ability to move contraband across it. Land can be burned, crops can be poisoned, people can be displaced, but that border—that border isn’t going anywhere. A product that might be worth a few cents one inch on their side of the border is worth thousands just one inch on the other side.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Billions of dollars, trying unsuccessfully to keep drugs out of the world’s most porous border? One-tenth of the anti-drug budget going into education and treatment, nine-tenths of those billions into interdiction? And not enough money from anywhere going into the root causes of the drug problem itself. And the billions spent keeping drug offenders locked up in prison, the cells now so crowded we have to give early release to murderers. Not to mention the fact that two-thirds of all the “non-drug” offenses in America are committed by people high on dope or alcohol. And our solutions are the same futile non-solutions—build more prisons, hire more police, spend more and more billions of dollars not curing the symptoms while we ignore the disease. Most people in my area who want to kick drugs can’t afford to get into a treatment program unless they have blue-chip health insurance, which most of them don’t. And there’s a six-month-to-two-year waiting list to get a bed in a subsidized treatment program. We’re spending almost $2 billion poisoning cocaine crops and kids over here, while there’s no money at home to help someone who wants to get off drugs. It’s insanity.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“You know the word 'barbarian’ came from the Romans? It meant 'redheaded.’ They was talking about you people. I saw that on the—what do you call it?—the History Channel, last night.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“In America, everything is about systems,” Barrera said. “In Mexico, everything is about personal relationships.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“They got the absolute freedom to choose what we want them to.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Not in San Salvador, he thinks, where the shanty slums press against gleaming high-rises like the thatched huts of medieval peasants pressed against castle walls. Except these castle walls are patrolled by private security guards wielding automatic rifles and machine pistols. And at night, the guards venture out from the castle walls and ride through the villages ...and slaughter the peasants, leaving their bodies at crossroads and in the middle of village squares, and rape and kill women and execute children in front of their parents. 

So the survivors will know their place. 

It’s a killing ground, Art thinks. 

El Salvador. 

The Savior, my ass.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Deliver my soul from the sword; my love from the power of the dog. Psalms 22:20”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“The reaction at Manhattan South is going to go something like Someone blanked Eddie Friel? Oh. Anyone want this last chocolate glazed?”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“This is what Mexican cops appreciate that American cops don’t. We are partners, mi hermano Arturo, in the same enterprise. Comrades in the War on Drugs. We could not exist without each other.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“The lost, the lonely, the bicultural misfits with a foot in two worlds and a place in neither. And”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“All this and the wine's coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan’s about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, 'Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.' 

One motherfuck of an essay question. ”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“All this and the wines coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan’s about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, 'Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.' 

One motherfuck of an essay question. ”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“This train carries saints and sinners. This train carries losers and winners. This train carries whores and gamblers. This train carries lost souls…   Canción popular”
― Don Winslow, El poder del perro

“When you’re headin’ for the border lord, you’re bound to cross the line.   KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, «Border Lord»”
― Don Winslow, El poder del perro

“The lost, the lonely, the bicultural misfits with a foot in two worlds and a place in neither.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“What’s the problem?” Fuck it, Art thought. Too late now. So he answered, “That we look at 'these people’ like 'targets.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Adán fell asleep to these stories and slept like the dead until the sun struck him in the eyes and the whole long, wonderful summer day started again with the smell of fresh tortillas, manchaca, chorizo, and fat, sweet oranges.”
― Don Winslow , The Power of the Dog

“So”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Haley wants her women to stand out. And they’re always fully dressed. Never in lingerie or robes—Haley’s not running some cheap Nevada mustang ranch. She’s been known to costume the women in turtlenecks, in business suits, in basic little black frocks, in gowns. She dresses her women in clothes that the men can imagine removing. And she makes them wait to do that. They have to jump through hoops, even at the White House.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Mexican fight fans have more respect for what a fighter can take than for what he can dish out.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“There hasn’t been an actual condor seen in Mexican skies in over sixty years, longer in the States. But every operation has to have a name or we don’t believe it’s real, so Condor it is. Art’s done a little reading on the bird. It is (was) the largest bird of prey, although the term is a little misleading, as it preferred scavenging over hunting. A big condor, Art learned, could take out a small deer; but what it really liked was when something else killed the deer first so the bird could just swoop down and take it. We prey on the dead. Operation Condor.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog