The Winter of Frankie Machine Quotes

“Life’s like a fat orange, Frank thinks. When you’re young, you squeeze it hard and fast, trying to get all the juice in a hurry. When you’re older, you squeeze it slowly, savoring every drop. Because, one, you don’t know how many drops you have left, and, two, the last drops are the sweetest.”
― Don Winslow, The Winter of Frankie Machine

“He’s hunted enough guys to know that their own heads can be their worst enemies. They start seeing things that aren’t there, then, worse, not seeing things that are. They worry and worry, and chew on their own insides, until, when you do track them down, they’re almost grateful. By this time, they’ve been killed so many times in their minds that the real thing is a relief.”
― Don Winslow, The Winter of Frankie Machine

“When you want to catch a fish, you gotta give it the bait it’s hungry for.”
― Don Winslow, The Winter of Frankie Machine

“Nike pays twenty-nine cents to a child for making a basketball jersey, then turns around and sells it for one hundred and forty dollars." Frank said. "And I'm the criminal?
"Wal-Mart send half the mom-and-pop stores in the country the way of the buffalo while they pay the kids who make their cheap crap seven cents an hour. And I'm the criminal?
"Two million jobs have gone adios in the past two years, a working man can't afford a down payment on a house anymore, and the IRS mugs us like drunks at an ATM, then sends our money to a defense contractor who closes down a factory, lays off workers, and pays himself a seven-figure bonus. And I'm the criminal? I'm the guy who should get life without parole?
"You could take the Crips, the Bloods, the Jamaican posses, the Mafia, the Russian mob, and the Mexican cartels, and all of them put together couldn't rake in as much green in a good year as Congress does in a bad afternoon. You could take every gang banger selling crack on every corner in America, and they couldn't generate as much ill-gotten cash as one senator rounding the back nine with a corporate CEO.
"My father told me that you can't beat the house, and he was right. You can't beat the White House, or the House of Representatives. They own the game and the game is fixed, and it isn't fixed for us.
"Sure, every thirty-eighth blue moon, they'll whack one of their own. Send a human sacrifice to some Club Fed for a couple of years as sop to the masses and an example to the others of what happens to a rich white guy stupid enough to let that fifth ace fall out of his sleeve in full view of the public. But let me slip on the cosmic banana peel, and I am going to the maximum hole with the rest of the losers for the rest of my life.
"You know why the government wants to shut down organized crime?
"We're competition.
"That's it. That's what's behind the OC Task Force, your FBI, RICO. RICO? Big government and big business? That is the working definition of 'racketeering in conspiracy.' A felony happens every time two suits take a piss together in the Senate men's room.
"So the government wants to beat down organized crime.
"That's hysterical.
"The government is organized crime.
"The only difference between us and them is they're more organized.”
― Don Winslow, The Winter of Frankie Machine

“There comes a time in a man’s life, he figured, the infamous midlife crisis, when a guy has to face the reality that what he has is all he’s going to get, and he needs to find his peace and his happiness in his life as it is.”
― Don Winslow, The Winter of Frankie Machine

“The mob guys know it. They know that you bribe a politician only once. After that, you blackmail him.”
― Don Winslow, The Winter of Frankie Machine