Memory Man Quotes

“More guns! No guns! Second Amendment! Guns kill! No, people kill!”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“He knew exactly what it was like to lose a child. And that fact wouldn’t matter in the least in this circumstance. There could be no commiseration among such people despite the seeming commonality of loss, because it was actually each parent’s totally unique hell.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“her room now?” They were led down the hall by Beth. Before she turned away she took a last drag on her smoke and said, “However this comes out, there is no way my baby would have had anything to do with something like this, drawing of this asshole or not. No way. Do you hear me? Both of you?” “Loud and clear,” said Decker. But he thought if Debbie were involved she had already paid the ultimate price anyway. The state couldn’t exactly kill her again. Beth casually flicked the cigarette down the hall, where it sparked and then died out on the faded runner. Then she walked off. They opened the door and went into Debbie’s room. Decker stood in the middle of the tiny space and looked around. Lancaster said, “We’ll have the tech guys go through her online stuff. Photos on her phone, her laptop over there, the cloud, whatever. Instagram. Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. Wherever else the kids do their electronic preening. Keeps changing. But our guys will know where to look.” Decker didn’t answer her. He just kept looking around, taking the room in, fitting things in little niches in his memory and then pulling them back out if something didn’t seem right as weighed against something else. “I just see a typical teenage girl’s room. But what do you see?” asked Lancaster finally. He didn’t look at her but said, “Same things you’re seeing. Give me a minute.” Decker walked around the small space, looked under piles of papers, in the young woman’s closet, knelt down to see under her bed, scrutinized the wall art that hung everywhere, including a whole section of People magazine covers. She also had chalkboard squares affixed to one wall. On them was a musical score and short snatches of poetry and personal messages to herself: Deb, Wake up each day with something to prove. “Pretty busy room,” noted Lancaster, who had perched on the edge of the girl’s desk. “We’ll have forensics come and bag it all.” She looked at Decker, obviously waiting for him to react to this, but instead he walked out of the room. “Decker!” “I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder. She watched him go and then muttered, “Of all the partners I could have had, I got Rain Man, only giant size.” She pulled a stick of gum out of her bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. Over the next several minutes she strolled the room and then came to the mirror on the back of the closet door. She appraised her appearance and ended it with the resigned sigh of a person who knows their best days physically are well in the past. She automatically reached for her smokes but then decided against it. Debbie’s room could be part of a criminal investigation. Her ash and smoke could only taint that investigation.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Dark, cool, musty, smoky, where light fell funny and everyone looked like someone you knew or wanted to know. Or, more likely, wanted to forget.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“But then he put aside the awkward encounter, which his mind allowed him to do quite easily. He could compartmentalize at an astonishing level. It came from not giving a shit.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“It would cut into him at unpredictable moments, like a gutting knife made of colored light.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Kids make everything better. And harder.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“I hate the world,” said Lancaster, looking miserable. “I don’t hate the world,” said Decker. “I only hate some of the people who unfortunately live in it.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Life had coincidences. Serendipity abounded. Wrong place, wrong time. It came as the result of seven billion people jostling each other within the span of a single planet. But there was an unwritten rule in police work: There are no coincidences. All you needed was more in-depth investigation to show that there are no coincidences.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Get Decker on Mansfield. See what he sees. We need help and him sitting on his fat ass feeling sorry for himself or obsessing over Leopold or playing private dick for lowlifes is not a good use of his time.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“a medical transport van. Her left side”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Now we know there are many other factors involved. It’s often better to wait and come to understand each person’s unique situation and to allow the patient to have substantial input into the decision. I mean, it’s their body and life after all.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“It was all still just happening. However, the news would pick it up and then not let it go. Until the next shooting came along. Then they would rush headlong that way. Until the next one.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“A squatter for life is inhabiting my mind. And he happens to be me.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“that one could never be the same afterward. It pushed bone, muscle, ligaments, and brains to places they were never intended to go. It was no wonder that so many men who had played the game were now suffering the long-term debilitating effects of entertaining millions and making large sums of money for doing so.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“So it was a true sunrise, where the colors changed at first subtly and then suddenly transformed the heavens in a way that no other occurrence could. Short of a nuclear bomb and its towering mushroom cloud. Yet both were transformative in their own right. One side of the world was lit, the other enveloped in blackness. The bomb’s kiss was for real. The sun’s movement was a metaphor for either darkness descending or light arising.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“remarkable was that she had been the first female detective in the Burlington Police Department. As far as he knew she was still the only one. And she had been his partner. They had made more arrests leading to more convictions than anyone in”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“synesthesia”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“You were walking stiffly when you came in. Bone ache is a classic symptom.” He pointed to her forehead. “And it’s cold outside but your head is sweating. Another classic. And you’ve crossed and uncrossed your legs five times in the brief time you’ve been sitting there. Bladder problems. Another symptom.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“me a way”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“And after the hit on the gridiron his filter had been vastly reduced, so it was even harder for him not to always tell the literal truth. He instinctively craved precision and was reluctant to accept anything less than that.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Gray. For him, as for many folks, it was a confusing color. It lent itself to no particular interpretation. It was a color that could go one way or the other. People desperately wanted the world to be clear-cut in black and white. It made life so much easier: Tough decisions faded away; everything was nicely organized and cataloged. And so were people. But the world was not like that. And neither were the people who inhabited it. At least for those who bothered to explore its complexity. Its grayness.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“I’m not a big fan of football. Gladiators of the twenty-first century, wrecking each other for our amusement while we drink beer and eat hot dogs and cheer when a guy gets wiped out. You’d think we would have gotten beyond that. I guess there’s too much money in it.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Russians. They were in Germany,”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Those who only watched pro football from the safety of their stadium seats or big-screen TVs could never imagine the devastating power of enormous men running at speed into other enormous men. It was like being in a car accident over and over. It didn’t merely hurt; it stunned. It shocked the body in so many different ways that one could never be the same afterward.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“It was the darkest moments before dawn broke. He had been here for hours. It felt like ten minutes, because he really hadn’t come up with anything. But that was okay. Miracles and epiphanies rarely happened in the middle of criminal investigations. If you wanted something like that you needed to turn on the TV.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“rooms one by one until they came to the stairs.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“texted each of them. He waited, waited, waited. Then”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“looking at her but not really seeing her, and his baby girl sure as heaven not seeing her daddy either”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man