Stalking the Angel Quotes

“Stalking the Angel
[Joe]"I could off anybody in this place five times over."
[Elvis]"Could you off someone and get away with you here?"
[Joe]Head shake. "I'm too good even for me.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking the Angel

“there was a quality of loneliness to her that comes when your only friend walks away and you don’t know why and there’s no one else and never will be. A left-behind look.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Sometimes. Sometimes you can change what’s there, sometimes what’s there changes you.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Waiting doesn’t look like much, but it is something very important. Waiting is passive hunting.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“I looked like an ad for Banana Republic. Maybe Banana Republic would give me a job. They could put my picture in their little catalog and under it they could say: Elvis Cole, famous detective, outfitted for his latest adventure in rugged inner-city climes!”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“I’m a big brown mouse, I go marching through the house, and I’m not afraid of anything! I”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Kerri turned each page slowly, lifting the next page and scanning the pictures”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“I leaned against the fence and crossed my arms and stared at her. After a while she looked over and said, “Why are you staring at me?” “Because I am the Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, and I am trying to figure out what to do.” She blinked at me. “Jiminy Cricket,” I said. “He was also Counselor in Moments of Temptation, and Guide Along the Straight and Narrow Path. You need that.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“The cat door clacked and the cat came in from the kitchen. When he saw Jillian he growled, deep and warlike. I said, “Beat it.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“The next day I watched TV and read and lay on the couch and stared at my high-vaulted ceiling. Just after noon I showered and shaved and dressed and took a drive over to the County Medical Facility and asked them if I could see Mimi. They said no. I left the front and went around back and tried to sneak in, but a seventy-five-year-old security guard with narrow shoulders and a wide butt caught me and raised hell. It goes like that sometimes.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Joe Pike thought about that for a long time. Centuries. Then he said, “Someone had to bring her back.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“For the longest time, Mimi Warren did not move, then she looked at me and said, “I don’t feel anything.” I said, “Kid, you’ve had so much done to you that the part that feels went dead a long time ago.” Maybe Carol Hillegas could fix it. Mimi cocked her head the way a bird will, as if I’d said something curious, and smiled. “Is that what you think?”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Erté painting”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“He came around with a red plastic gas can and got into one of the boats and filled its tank. “Watch out for those rat bastard ski boats,” he said. “Damn rich kids come out here and run wild all over the goddamn lake. Swamp you sure as I shit peanuts.” He was a charming old guy.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“There were dozens of boats and skiers on the water, the powerboats and jet skis buzzing like angry mutant wasps.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“The living room walls were crowded with trophies for excellence in the martial arts. Hundreds of them. Gleaming first-place cups and championship belts from exhibitions and tournaments all over the United States. Best All-Around. In Recognition of Excellence. Black Belt Master. Over-All Champion. “Don’t worry about this stuff,” I said. “The guy probably bought’m.” Pike said, “Uh-huh.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Does your mother know?” Shrug. The tears dropped down her cheeks and into her mouth. She dug out another cigarette and lit it. Her fingers were wet from wiping away tears and left gray marks on the paper. She made the giggle and it was confused and crazy. She said, “Eddie and I are going to get married. He said we’re going to live in a penthouse apartment on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood and I’m going to have babies and we’ll go to the beach a lot.” She said it in the to-herself voice.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Bobby’s cheek was swollen and beginning to color but he still managed a grin. Probably because he had a Ruger .380 automatic in his left hand instead of a nightstick. He aimed it at me and said, “Here’s where I put the fuck on you, asshole.” That Bobby. What a way with words.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“I was halfway up a wide curving staircase when Mimi Warren and her friend Kerri came around the corner and started down. Mimi’s nose was red and her hair looked like she hadn’t brushed it. When she saw me she took a half step back up toward the landing, then stopped. “How did you find me?” I spread my hands. “You’re supposed to be kidnapped. You go to clubs on Sunset Boulevard, you gotta expect to be found.” Kerri said, “Who is this?” I said, “Peter Parker.” Kerri looked confused. “Most people know me as The Amazing SpiderMan.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Terry Ito had said Eddie Tang was on his way up. Maybe Eddie figured taking advantage of Mimi Warren and stealing the Hagakure were the keys to ascendancy.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Maybe if I didn’t think about Mimi Warren or Traci Louise Fishman or Eddie Tang they would all disappear and living would be easy. Elvis Cole, Existential Detective. I liked that. Not thinking, properly done, creates a pleasant numbed sensation in the brain that I like a lot. There are women who will tell you that not thinking is one of my best things.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“A left-behind look.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Traci Louise Fishman picked at the steering wheel some more, then gave me the Special Secret look again. Like there was something else I’d never heard before, and something Traci had never been able to tell, and now she wanted to. “You want me to tell you something really weird?” I looked at her. “Last year, we were up in my room, smoking. My room is on the second floor and in the back, so I can open the window and no one knows.” “Uh-huh.” “We were smoking and talking and Mimi said, ‘Watch this,’ and she pulled up her shirt and put the hot part of the cigarette on her stomach and held it there.” I sat in the Rabbit, listening to sixteen-year-old Traci Louise Fishman, and my back went cold. “It was so weird I couldn’t even say anything. I just watched, and it seemed like she held it there forever, and I yelled, ‘That’s crazy, Mimi, you’ll have a scar,’ and she said she didn’t care, and then she pushed down her pants and there were these two dark marks just above her hair down there and she said, ‘Pain gives us meaning, Traci,’ and then she took a real deep drag on the cigarette and got the tip glowing bright red and then she did it again.” Traci Louise Fishman’s eyes were round and bulging. She was scared, as if telling me these things she had been keeping secret for so long was in some way giving them reality for the first time, and the reality was a shameful, frightful thing. I ran my tongue across the backs of my teeth and thought about Mimi Warren and couldn’t shake the cold feeling. “Did she do things like that often?”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“The girls at the Porsche leaned against its fenders and looked past each other so they could see the Rabbit and me and Traci, and there was lots of laughter. One of them stared openly. I said, “You think they share the same lip gloss tube?” Traci giggled. She looked at me sort of the same way she looked at them, out from under her eyes, as if she really didn’t want you to know she was looking, as if she thought that if you knew, you’d say something sharp or do something hurtful. “Don’t you think they look like clones?” she said. “They have no individuality. They’re scared of being unique, and therefore alone, so they mask their fear by sameness and denigrate those who do not share their fear.” She just tossed that off, like saying, Hey, buddy, how about a bag of nuts? She said, “They’re talking about us, you know. They’re wondering who’s that guy and why are you sitting with me.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“We saw the new gymnasium and the new science labs and the newly expanded library and the new theater arts building and a lot of coeds with moussed hair and bright plastic hair clips and skin cancer tans.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“Some guys can charm the stitches off a baseball.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“So. Ixnay on the direct approach.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“She opened her car door again, but still didn’t get in. Out in the street some rich kid’s Firebird with a Glaspak muffler blasted past, wrecking the calm. She said, “You go to school, you work hard, you play the game. When you’re in school, they don’t tell you how much it costs. They don’t tell you what you’ve got to give up to get to where you want to be.” “They never do.” Jillian looked at me some more, then she said good night and got into her white BMW and drove away. I watched her. Then I drove away, too.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“I hadn’t heard it when I’d been in the house before, but when I was in the house before there’d been other people and things going on. Now the house seemed abandoned and desolate. Life in an Andrew Wyeth landscape.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel

“He turned and went out the back of the kitchen, the midget swaggering behind him. Eddie Tang went with them, walking backward and keeping his eyes on Joe Pike. He stopped in the door, gave Pike a nasty grin, then peeled up his sleeves to show the tattoos. He worked his arms to make the tattoos dance, then snarled and flexed the huge traps so they grew out of his back like spiny wings. Then he left.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking The Angel