Free Fire Quotes

“Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world’s first national park—a set-aside of 2. 2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife—so no man or corporation could ever own it.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“We’re trivial pissants in the big scheme of things, fleas, fly shit in the pepper.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“We are both disciples of the Louis Jordan song ‘What’s the Use of Getting Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again).”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Because it’s indicative of a tired mind-set. It’s nothing more than mental jerking off: puffed-up officials trying to make order out of random acts when all around them their world is about to explode—but they just don’t know it, or care. It’s like trying to find the fly shit in the pepper. I mean, who cares?”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“the Eight Percent Rule to McCann. “It’s really very simple,” he said, using the same melodic voice he used to pet and stroke the jury. “I have to convince one juror out of twelve to vote with us. One of twelve is eight percent, give or take. Not that I need to convince him our client is innocent, understand. I just need to establish an intimate partnership with that one fellow or lady in a crowd who is contrary. The man or woman who has an ax to grind. My theory, and you saw it happen twice, is that in any group of people forced to be together, at least eight percent of them will go against the majority if for no other reason than to shove it up their ass—if they have an authority figure they can trust to be on their side. I am that leader in the courtroom.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Yellowstone was established as the first national park in the world in 1872 by an act of Congress. The boundaries were drawn before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana were granted statehood,”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“It’s not like our laws are moral codes—they’re just a set of rules dreamed up by politicians to keep themselves in power and placate their contributors.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Every place in West, it seemed, was always for sale.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“He loved Teddy Roosevelt’s words: ‘For the benefit and enjoyment of the people. ’ He used to say it all the time.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“it’s just as interesting inside. There are secret stairways, hidden rooms, and a crazy dead-end hallway called Bat’s Alley. They’re closed to the public, of course, and very few people know about them.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“them”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“he had preferred it to heaven because at that age Joe didn’t think there could be trout streams in the clouds.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“The first of the Baby Boomers. It’s all about them.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“large outhouse.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“revealing of its origin as a U. S. Army post before the National Park Service came to be. Elk”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“first national park in the world in 1872 by an act of Congress. The boundaries were drawn before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana were granted statehood,” Joe”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“We shouldn’t automatically oppose everything. I mean, what makes us so fucking smart? We’re the beneficiaries of people before us figuring out shit that makes our lives better or helps us live longer. Why stop now, just because we think we know it all?”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Outrageous accusations should be met with outraged denials if the person accused was innocent.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“It was easier to stay away and keep a rigid ideology when not mugged by reality.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“was here last. His parents had put down blankets and he slept there on the floor. But it had seemed so much bigger at the time, just like the room had seemed bigger, the hallways longer, the ceilings higher, the lightbulbs brighter. He could recall the musty smell of the carpet and the detergent odor of the bedspread. He remembered pretending to sleep while his father drank and raged and his mother sobbed. It was the first time in his life he’d been without his brother, and his brother was the reason they were in Yellowstone then. But most of all, he could remember the feeling of loss in the room, and what he thought at the time was the dawning of his own”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Hi, Tony.” “I thought I’d gotten rid of him for good,” Portenson said in a way that didn’t reveal if he was joking or not. “But here he is again, like a bad penny.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Winter was held off for yet another day although it didn’t even attempt to hide its dark intentions anymore, and the weather was cool and clear. Pockets of aspen performed maudlin technicolor death scenes on the mountainsides while brittle dry leaves choked the small streams and skittered across the road with breaths of wind.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Joe wanted to reach across the table, gather the old man’s collar in his fist, and bounce him up and down like a rag doll. “At one time, I had a lot to say to you. For years, I rehearsed what I was going to tell you if I ever got the opportunity I have now. I’d go over it when I was by myself like it was a speech. I had sections about what you did to my mother, my brother, and me. It was a pretty good speech, and I’m not good at speeches. But now that you’re sitting right there, I can’t remember any of it.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Joe didn’t like talking so much. He had already used more words in this room than he had in the past month. But he had no choice but to continue. Self-doubt began to creep into his consciousness, like a black storm cloud easing over the top of the mountains. He wasn’t sure this was a job he could do well, a role he could play competently. Joe liked working the margins, keeping his mouth shut, observing from the sidelines. He did his best to block out the image of the thunderhead rolling over.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“So we take infinitesimal little actions like preventing oil exploration, or recycling our beer cans, or driving hybrid cars that cost twenty-five times what a Third World worker makes in a year, or shaming other people for their desire to live well and prosper . . .”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“We humans have such a high opinion of ourselves—especially my old brethren in the movement. We think we’re gods on earth, that by merely changing our behavior or, more important, changing the behavior of the heathen industrialists and capitalists, that we can actually affect the outcome of the planet. We’re so unbelievably arrogant and elite, so blind, so stupid. We think we can control the world. It’s so tremendously silly I laugh when I think about it.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“there were three kinds of thermal features in the world: geysers, mud pots, and fumaroles (steam vents), and Yellowstone featured them all.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“a Nean derthal with a badge.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“Way too many fat people in shorts.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“THE OLD FAITHFUL area was the largest complex in the park, consisting of hundreds of cabins, the Snow Lodge, retail stores, souvenir shops and snack bars, a rambling Park Service visitor center, and the showpiece structure of the entire park: the hundred-plus-year-old Old Faithful Inn that stood in sharp, gabled, epic relief against the star-washed sky.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire