The Quiet Game Quotes

“I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose provenance dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

And who among us, offered the chance, would not relive the day or hour in which we first knew love, or ecstasy, or made a choice that forever altered our future, negating a life we might have had? Such chances are rarely granted. Memory and grief prove Faulkner right enough, but Einstein knew the finality of action. If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“I educated myself, discovered my gift for language, learned that the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Emotions are by nature amorphous. When confined to words, our longings and passions, our rebellions and humiliations often seem melodramatic, trivial, or even pathetic.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Jung didn’t try to separate good and evil. He knew that both exist in every human heart. He called the propensity to evil the Shadow. And he believed that trying to deny or repress the Shadow is dangerous. Because it can’t be done. He believed you have to recognize your Shadow, come to grips with it, accept it, and integrate it.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Our actions have consequences that last long after us, entwining the present with the future in ways we cannot begin to understand. I have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me happy today, and which I can also live with ten years from now.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“You yourself are guilty of a crime when you do not punish crime.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“The female memory defies explanation.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose provenance dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Our actions have consequences that last long after us, entwining the present with the future in ways we cannot begin to understand.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“You never wear red to no funeral; red says the dead person was a fool.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“The finger descends, admonitory now. “You children today smirk and turn up your nose when I say old coats and old shoes. But what you don’t know—and you better thank God you don’t know—is that when you’re cold, you’ll take whatever coat you can get, and praise Jesus for it.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“The danger is real, Caitlin.” “Give me a break. Nobody killed Woodward and Bernstein.” “They weren’t working in Mississippi.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“God, I’m trapped in a Southern gothic novel.” “You asked for it.” She finishes off her martini in a gulp. “I hope nobody’s going to ask me to squeal like a pig.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“The hour of justice does not strike on the dials of this world.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“A man lives morally all his life, then in one weak moment commits an act that damns him in his own eyes and threatens his liberty, even his life.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Rumor runs through the community like a plague, and truth is the first casualty.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“A glacier consumes whole forests by inches.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“learned that the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Broad is the gate that leads to destruction, but narrow the way that leads to salvation. . . .”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“There is no more inept liar than someone who has spent a lifetime telling the truth.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“A 1950s incarnation of man’s glittering destiny, Tomorrowland was outstripped by reality more rapidly than old Walt could have imagined, transformed into a kitschy parody of the dreams of the Eisenhower era. It stands as mute but eloquent testimony to man’s inability to predict what lies ahead.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Blonde and lank-haired, she could be twenty-five or thirty-five. She has the indeterminate look of hill people everywhere: sallow skin and hard angles, though she is pretty in the way waitresses at the Waffle House can be pretty at four a.m.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“I was fifteen, and I’d been sleeping with this older girl from the public school who went off to junior college. I stole the family car a couple of times to go see her. In the kitchen one night my mother told me I couldn’t do that anymore. In my hormone-intoxicated state, I said, ‘Mom, why are you being such a bitch about this?’ ” “Oh, my God.” “My dad clocked me. This man of reason who had never lifted a finger to me slapped me an open-handed blow that damn near blacked me out. I was spiritually stunned. But it was the right blow at the right moment. The only one I ever needed. It drew the line for me.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“I guess running for office in this town is like fighting a two-front war.” “Two-front war? Man, this town has more factions than the Knesset. Redneck Baptists, rich liberals, yellow dog Democrats, middle-class blacks, young fire eaters, Uncle Toms, and bone-dumb bluegums working the bottomland north of town. It’s like conducting a symphony with musicians who hate each other.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“Jung didn’t try to separate good and evil. He knew that both exist in every human heart. He called the propensity to evil the Shadow.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“I have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me happy today, and which I can also live with ten years from now.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

“The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game