Point of Impact Quotes

“A man may lie to his psychiatrist, his doctor, his wife, his employer, to God and to Mom, but his teeth tell all;”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“You are the most contrary man I ever met. If someone handed you a glass of free beer that was nine-tenths full, you’d cry over the missing tenth.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“But shooting a man takes one of two things: an overwhelming fear of one’s own death, which Nick did not have in the least; or conviction. It turned out he lacked this component as well.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“What he called his own personal night was about the feeling of being nothing, of having no worth, of having spent himself in a war nobody cared about, and having given up everything that was important and good.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“Son, I don’t think you understand. These boys killed my dog.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“That’s what Nick ran into all the time on the streets. Somehow in America it had stopped being about us or we or the team or the family; it was this me-thing that turned people crazy. They expected so much. They thought they were so important. Everybody was an only child.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“I deal in lead, friend.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“Because I'm too old for tragedy. I like a nice happy ending too.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“I’ll tell you this, Nick, I’m from the South and I’ve known men like that my whole life. They’re not much damn good at anything except dying in wars and shooting helpless animals, Lord knows why, and outsmarting the law. They’re sly, that’s their talent. And I never met anybody who could outsly a sly old country boy and from what I’ve heard of Bob Lee Swagger, he’s the slyest of them all. There’s just no way a carpetbagging yankee like Howdy Duty or an old ghost like Hugh Meachum could bring it off.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“It can be foolish as all get-out, yes, ma’am. It doesn’t make much sense. But I was just taught to hurt no man except the man who hurt me and mine. I have no other star to steer by. That and to do my duty as I understand it. If I followed those two rules, I’d be okay.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“bullet,” said Colonel Shreck, “was to open up and rip the shit out of the tissue and organs.” “It didn’t open,” said Hatcher. “If it had, he’d have never made it to the car, much less dumped that FBI agent. We know because Payne’s report says he saw blood on the back of the shirt. It had to go through without opening up.” “Why didn’t it open up?” Shreck asked. Finally, Hatcher answered. “In our research, we’ve found that most of the stopping problems with 9mm Silvertip came with first-generation ammunition. They first started manufacturing it in the mid-seventies. The real bad stopping problems took place then; subsequently they changed the circumference of the”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“knowing that he himself looked so cowboylike to these Eastern people, in his best black Tony Lamas, a nice pair of Levi’s, a pointed-collar shirt with string tie and a black Stetson, all under a sheepskin coat, his best coat.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“Man without a gun has got no chance, Bob thought. Man has a gun, he has a chance.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“he could make out face, he was under two hundred yards. If he could just make out head he was under three hundred. If he could make out only legs, he was under four hundred. If he could make out body, he was under five hundred; if he could only see movement, he was under six hundred.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“There should be a way to surgically remove and store children’s tongues as soon as they learn to speak,” said Hugh. “Then, when they’ve graduated from college and distinguished themselves in the workplace, they could file a petition to have their tongues reattached.” “I don’t think that’s feasible,”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“You see, you make it so terrible for us,” she said. “For the women. Because normal men want to be like you, they learn about you from movie versions of you, and they try for that same laconic spirit, that Hemingway stoicism. They manufacture themselves in your image but they don’t have the guts or the power to bring it off. So they just exile themselves from us, pretending to be you and to have your power, and we can never reach them.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“I'm too old to scare and too stubborn to budge.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact