Punishment Quotes

“Here’s what I’m selling—you leave the world a better place than when you entered it. That’s all there is. For us it means we take down bad guys. For the dude who owns Lafayette it means serving the best goddamned coney dogs you’re ever gonna eat. For some Peace Corps sap it means putting rice in some poor kid’s bowl and swatting the flies off him. It doesn’t matter what you choose, it only matters what you can make stick.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“machine until it tears you apart?” Barnes shook his head. He put the coin purse in his outer jacket pocket, touched the Ziploc bag of salt that was still there. He said, “CP583427.” “What’s that?” “That’s the big clue Reyes has been trying to make us see. Some serial number or code. Haven’t figured it out yet. Mean anything to you?” “Not off the top.” Barnes looked out the window. The sun was beginning its ascent”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“Tom Waits was on the jukebox. The man’s voice sounded like demons and angels were playing tug-of-war with his vocal cords.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“His eyes became unfocused. Barnes had seen it before—the moment of clarity that hits someone who had been close to a murder victim, the fresh realization that the victim would never come back. It often came on the heels of the first time they used was instead of is.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“A thought like that might once have disturbed him, made him wonder whether he was depraved, but now such thoughts were like wind gusts through a keyhole.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“And then there was punishment. Hundreds of machines were being used not just by police forces and homicide detectives for investigative purposes but also by prisons and mental-health systems for rehabilitation. At any moment in America, there were dozens of murderers, rapists, and domestic abusers having their crimes pumped into their skulls from their victims’ points of view. The feeling of a punch that breaks a nose, the sledgehammer impact and burn of a bullet, the indescribable feeling of one’s neck being opened like a zipper. They smelled the blood and cordite, felt the pheromones of fear. They heard the screams, the cries, the unanswered pleas for mercy. A Clockwork Orange had nothing on the machine, and Barnes had experienced all varieties of its punishments.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment

“My candle burns at both ends, It will not last the night. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, It gives a lovely light.”
― Scott J. Holliday, Punishment