The Broken Window Quotes

“You can’t lick a murder weapon, Lincoln.” “Where’s that written down, Mel? I don’t remember reading that.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“The seat of power in the twenty-first century is information, not oil or geography.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“Either find a solution to your problem, or stop considering it a problem.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“Confused?” “Not really. To be confused you have to be paying attention.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“That’s what happens in love. In the shaded portions where the two spheres of different lives meet, certain fundamentals—moods, loves, fears, angers—can’t be hidden. That’s the contract.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“Remember, people hassle you in all sorts of different ways. Don’t assume they’re right and you’re wrong just because they know something you don’t. The question is: Do you need to know it to do a better job? Then learn it. If not, it’s a distraction and to hell with it.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“(Ah, that debate again: data . . . plural or singular? Data has told or data have told? Merriam-Webster’s assures us either is correct. By myself, I tend to be purist: data plural. But in public I try hard to treat the word as singular, like most of society, and hope I don’t slip up. Language is a river; it goes where it will and if you swim against that current you get noticed. And that, of course, is the last thing in the world I want.)”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“Only the weak compromise.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“The thrust is that in order to improve society you should concentrate on the small things. If you control those—or fix them—then the bigger changes will follow.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window

“wearing your clothes. Not much left after the animals, right? And they take hair and saliva samples from your house. Yep, the DNA matches. No doubt in the world. You’re dead. But it wasn’t your hair or saliva in your bathroom, was it? The man you killed, you took some hair from him and left it in your bathroom. And brushed his teeth, right?” “And a little blood on the Gillette. You police do love your blood, don’t you?” “Who was the man you killed?” “Some kid from California. Hitchhiker on I-70.” Keep him uneasy—information’s your only weapon. Use it! “We never knew why you did it, though, Peter. Was it to sabotage the SSD takeover of Rocky Mountain Data? Or was it more?” “Sabotage?” he whispered in astonishment. “You just don’t get it, do you? When Andrew Sterling and his folks from SSD came to Rocky Mountain and wanted to acquire it, I scrounged every bit of data I could find on him and the company. And what I saw was breathtaking! Andrew Sterling is God. He’s the future of data, which means he’s the future of society. He could find data that I couldn’t even imagine existed, and use it like a gun, or like medicine, or like holy water. I needed to be part of what he was doing.” “But you couldn’t be a data scrounger for SSD. Not for what you had planned, right? For your . . . other collecting? And the way you lived.” She nodded at the filled rooms. His face grew dark, his eyes wide.”
― Jeffery Deaver, The Broken Window