A Violent Masterpiece Quotes

“The serpent that circles the world shows itself in rubber bullets and masked kidnappers. Pay attention. Jake has it right in chapter 1: Los Angeles is America. Protect your neighbors. Stay alive.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“He's up there—excuse me, down there—where there isn't any difference between government and business. There's just power. Maybe he works for the government, maybe the government works for him, maybe even talking about things like rules and laws doesn't make any sense in that world. And every once in a while, one out of a thousand of them actually goes down for their decades of evil, like Eric did. But you take a step back, and you see, the ones who get caught only go down so the other nine hundred and ninety-nine can go free. A limited hangout. A thin scrim of almost-justice on top of a roiling pot of do-what-thou-wilt.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Nothing more pathetic than a fuckboy in retreat.” *”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“That’s the only kind of bad he understands. And bad things don’t happen to people like him. Or if they do”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“This commie state hasn’t killed anybody since 2006. They aren’t going to start with a white man.” “Death row’s death row. It’s no way to spend the rest of your life.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Crisis management is its own art”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“They serve to reduce the women to objects. A thing with no function but to be destroyed. Misogyny amplified”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“There’s something in the meth,” Patrick says. “Something from China. It’s driving them all insane.” Patrick’s jaw is cocaine-clenched”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“She drives home in a trance, lets the stranger in her skull navigate her home. She looks at all the chain restaurants and closed-down big-box stores. She thinks about how everything we've built feels like the inside of a drugstore. Everything is emptied out; everything is locked down and full of bad light; everything is polluted by artificial flavors, artificial voices, artificial thoughts. Everything you buy is wrapped in thick plastic, with no way to open it, so you have to attack packages with scissors or your teeth, and then you better recycle that plastic or somehow the whole burning world is your fault. Everything feels haunted. Haunted by the past, haunted by the present we won't let ourselves see. Our phones cursed with AI images and robot calls and nameless texts. Our minds possessed by some rising intensity we cannot name, cannot face. So we raise our own plastic shields, lock ourselves down, in the name of loss prevention.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Tell me why a guy like you is suddenly in the crosshairs. Stop playing dumb on what happened at your house. Tell me who tried to kill you.” “I don’t have to explain —”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“The internet is calling for a woman’s blood so you’re putting it on tap.” “What”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Their eating sounds like a swamp. They make sour faces as they chew. Whale meat is a delicacy in Japan — but these men are not Japanese. They aren’t eating for pleasure”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“He saw how cops lied to suspects”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“This is how it is with white clients — they get outraged the moment something that has existed their whole lives suddenly turns around and touches them. Gibson tries to think about the last time he had a white client. He draws a blank.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Unless you find your angle. Jake has found his: An online audience who want more than little bites of the wildness. They want to gorge on it. They live through the screen”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Stolen land gulping stolen water. Streets paved with corpses. We even went and massacred the sky: smog strangles the air; light pollution buries the stars.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece