Chaos Quotes

“a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when you’re cocky.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Like most things in life, it’s all about timing.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear the fear itself can cause damage that's as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“She’s what my mother used to call “plain,” by which she meant an unremarkable-looking girl who was worse off than “the ugly ones.” That’s how she would say it, and her explanation for such a vile statement couldn’t have been more logical. At least in her limited way of thinking, and also in Dorothy’s because she shares the same point of view. Pretty girls don’t try at all because they don’t have to. Ugly girls try harder for obvious reasons. That leaves plain girls, which usually is synonymous with smart girls, and they need to try but don’t know any better or can’t be bothered.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Nanotubes are lightweight, incredibly strong, and structures made of these extremely fine fibers can be superfast and efficient at conducting electricity and heat. It’s believed and feared that molecular nanotechnology is the future of everything, including war. “Imagine making a small powerful bomb out of nanothermite or super-thermite?” Ernie is saying. “Or how about mini-nukes? Or God forbid bioterrorism delivered in the nano range? Scary shit.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Work and play with them but never show your underbelly, he would say. And for God’s sake keep your knickers on, Kay, or you’ll find out the hard way it’s a man’s world.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“open tailgate. “But for something like this, you got that right. We’re going to need a tent because you got all kinds of people looking down at us from buildings and the bridge.” I glance up at the long string of headlights moving above us, crossing the river in both directions. I watch aircraft lit up like small planets, clustered around Logan Airport, and I think of Dorothy again. Marino digs in a box of evidence-marking cones in bright primary”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“personal collection of anatomical drawings by Max Brödel, Edwin Landseer, Frank Netter, in addition to eighteenth-century prints of William Hogarth’s Four Stages of Cruelty.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“He’s ignoring all of us even as he follows our every word and intonation with the keenness of a hawk. I know it for a fact because that’s what he does.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“It’s true what they say about your sins finding you out.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“because she was overly sensitive, fragile and possessive, and at the time she had a powerful father at the Pentagon. This was according to Briggs, his rationale for why he needed to keep certain things from her. It was for her good and mine. It was for the best. Those are the sorts of things he’d say. I always knew he was kidding himself, and it might have been the only time I would have called him a coward.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“warned me from day one not to trust the Feds. I always found that amusing since he is the Feds—or he was. Work and play with them but never show your underbelly, he would say. And for God’s sake keep your knickers on, Kay, or you’ll find out the hard way it’s a man’s world. It doesn’t matter that it’s unfair, he’d declare with a pointed finger. If life were fair, people like us would be unemployed, and in my head I hear his resonating voice. It demanded attention no matter what he was saying or to whom. But keeping my knickers on wasn’t in the cards, and Briggs wasn’t solely motivated by his strong moral sensibilities, no matter what he claimed.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“It’s been only a matter of time before something terrible happened.” “And the delivery system in these two cases?” “Something like a long-range laser gun. A manned aircraft. Or much more problematic would be a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle converted into a weapon of assassination or mass destruction.” “As in a drone you can buy off the Internet?” “This is what we’ve been anticipating, and you’ve been hearing me say it for a while, Kay. A drone is going to take out a major passenger jet, a government building, a world leader. Sufficiently weaponized, a drone could take out a lot more than that. We’re waiting and watching because it’s a certainty when the capability is there.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Is it possible we’re dealing with some sort of DEW, a directed-energy weapon?” “As opposed to what? Heatstroke? A heart attack?”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“What are the Feds really after? The answer is almost always going to be mundane if not predictable. Add politics to power and season liberally with publicity. Then stir in the”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Briggs had a top-level security clearance and regularly advised military leaders, the secretary of state and various directorates including the Departments of Defense and Justice. He attended social events at the White House and was accustomed to briefing the president. For obvious reasons he’s of keen interest to the U.S. intelligence community, which isn’t going to insert itself directly into the domestic investigation of his death. The CIA is sneakier than that. Typically it uses the FBI as a liaison or a front because global spymasters aren’t supposed to deal directly with domestic medical examiners, cops and the likes. That’s a sanitized way of saying that in the real world the CIA is the invisible witch rubbing the FBI’s crystal ball, diverting and deploying its agents and experts like a squadron of flying monkeys. What happens next suddenly and without warning is they descend upon your scenes, your witnesses, your offices, paper records, database, labs, morgues, your very homes and families. There’s no regard for what damage might be done, and cops like Marino may never know what hit”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“There’s really only one rule in life, he preached. To do what’s right.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Life used to be more civilized than it’s become, that’s for sure.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“There are better ways to deal with bullies, and in some respects I’m actually grateful to my sister. Thanks to her I learned the art of silence, the power of listening and the added potency that comes with waiting. As our father used to say: A volte la vendetta é meglio mangiata fredda. Sometimes revenge really is better served cold.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“hypervigilance is fatiguing. When you have to think about everything you do and say, and watch every place you touch or step, it wears you down.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“unctuous,”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“Interpol’s United States headquarters, the National Central Bureau (NCB), reports directly to the attorney general. And”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“katydid.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“I feel it at a visceral level.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“I feel anger rising like heat from a lower level of my psyche, a region of my inner self that I don’t approve of and might just hate.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“The 2009 Montée de Tonnerre.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“equivocal”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“But as you know, the laws about nine-one-one recordings are rather murky in Massachusetts. There’s no statute that tells me you can’t listen. You’re right about that.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos

“accoutrements”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chaos