Natchez Burning Quotes

“Man plans, God laughs,”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“You can't build happiness on someone else's pain.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“The evil prosper, and the innocent pay the bills for them.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Don’t keep a girl guessing too long, or she’ll find the answer somewhere else.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.   —Aristotle”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“The past is never dead. It's not even past; if it were there would be no grief or sorrow.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children, because they’re more certain they are their own.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Did the fact that Martin Luther King diddled all those women change what he did for his people? Or Franklin Roosevelt? General Eisenhower? Not one whit. Men are men, and gods are for storybooks. And if you’ve read your Edith Hamilton or Jane Harrison—or the Old Testament, for that matter—you’ll know that gods acted like men most of the time, or worse.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“If a man lived long enough, his past would always overtake him, no matter how fast he ran or how morally he tried to live subsequently. And how men dealt with that law ultimately revealed their true natures.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. —Aristotle”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“to yearn for ignorance is to embrace the wishful thinking of a child. For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“A man's biggest enemy is his mouth.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“There is always something.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“The faith of children is an awesome thing to behold. If only we could all be worthy of it.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream. And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us. —Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop. The waves diminish, and all seems to return to its previous state, but that’s an illusion. Disturbed fish change their patterns, a snake slides off the muddy bank into the water, a deer bolts into the open to be shot. And the stone remains on the slimy bottom, out of sight but inarguably there, dense and permanent, sediment settling over it, turtles and catfish prodding it, the sun heating it through all the layers of water until that far-off day when, whether lifted by the fingers of a curious boy diving fifty years after it was cast or uncovered by a bone-dumb farmer draining the pond to plant another half acre of cotton, that stone finds its way back up to the light.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“But fear and danger aren’t always directly proportional. We’re all terrified by rattlesnakes, but the spider we brush off our sleeve with hardly a thought is far more likely to hurt us.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Nothing frightens me more than the faith in my daughter’s eyes. How many men deserve that kind of trust? One by one, the mentors I’ve most admired eventually revealed chinks in their armor, cracks in their façades, and tired feet of clay—or worse.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Fate doesn’t let men choose their wars. Or even their battles, sometimes. But one resolute man can sometimes accomplish remarkable things against overwhelming odds.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“superior numbers took their toll. Realizing that he and”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Caitlin’s ambition is like a third person in the car.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“For only with the deepest knowledge can one diagnose that most elusive of conditions: the truth.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Every son eventually learns his daddy has feet of clay. You just happen to have a father of singular rectitude, so it took until you were forty-five. That doesn’t make it any less painful.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Old Shelby said something interesting about facts: ‘People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“I’ve sometimes wondered whether human beings are like the universe itself, where 95 percent of what surrounds us is dark matter, and cannot be seen. The only way black holes can be detected is by the behavior of what’s around them—light and matter being distorted by immense forces within the collapsing star. Have I seen and yet not seen certain events that hint at deep,”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Comparing that shyster to a snake would be a slander to the serpent.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“Albert didn't know how that skinny school teacher could take what Willie gave her. But that was another thing he'd learned over the years; the size of the woman on the outside didn't mean nothing. It was how much hunger she had on the inside that made her what she was between the sheets.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning

“diffident voice. “You’re not going to believe this.”
― Greg Iles, Natchez Burning