Black Cordite, White Snow Quotes

“It leaves you cold, like a void has opened up deep inside you and drawn in all the color and beauty of the world into it. And it chafes, like an itch in a place you can't reach. You replay the moment again and again in your mind, wondering if you could have changed the outcome somehow. Eventually, like any wound, it hardens and becomes an ugly scar. An enduring part of you that still aches, especially on cold days.”
― Nate Granzow, Black Cordite, White Snow: A Minnesotan Prohibition Thriller

“There are more criminals made every day. You can blame the war for it: running young men through a meat grinder and expecting them to just go back to an ordinary life afterward. Or you can blame Prohibition. The police who line their pockets with bribes to look the other way. Or the ordinary people who gladly exchange their honest money for a bottle of booze to take the hurt out of their lives for a moment. Regardless of who is to blame, reality persists: There's money to be had. A big, messy pool of it. And for once it doesn't belong solely to the businessmen and the politicians. Now, you can choose to sit on the sidelines and feel morally superior for it, or you can wade into the cesspool with the rest of us wretched, miserable people and get a piece of it for yourself. Either way, there will be agony and death. Because that's what life is: an exhausting saga filled with suffering and disappointment. You can't change that. But you can mollify it for yourself.”
― Nate Granzow, Black Cordite, White Snow: A Minnesotan Prohibition Thriller

“There's an underworld expression I'm sure you've heard before: If you're looking for a mobster you haven't seen in a while, you can find him in one of three places: in jail, in the morgue, or in St. Paul.”
― Nate Granzow, Black Cordite, White Snow: A Minnesotan Prohibition Thriller

“You're far too young to be so jaded."
"It's not the number of years I've lived, Detective. It's which ones.”
― Nate Granzow, Black Cordite, White Snow: A Minnesotan Prohibition Thriller