The Road To Ruin Quotes

“You wanna know what’s happening to New York?” he asked. “I tell you what you do. You go to a used-magazine store, you look at the covers of science fiction magazines from the thirties. That’s what’s happening to New York.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“had been happy to play the part of a Brontë heroine if it meant she wouldn’t have to learn how to cook.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“telling the jokes—was the setups. Why were that priest, that rabbi, and that minister walking down that street? Where were they headed? How had they happened to come together? What odd chance had put ex-presidents Bush, Clinton, and Carter on that same plane?”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“At the moment, the discussion concerned global warming. “The reason for global warming,” one of them said as Dortmunder leaned his front against the bar somewhere down to the right of them, “is air conditioners.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“There are no Territories to light out for, not in this century. It was no longer easy to become the new you. New or old, you were already you.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“Since he’d been born rich into a family that had been a long time rich, he’d never known the need to suppress his feelings, so he pouted completely and might even have stamped his foot again, except he sensed that a kind of lumpish stillness might better illustrate the sulk he’d fallen into.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“... to liaise with the FBI and the CIA and all those other people in the intelligence community. The spooks.
"Spies"
"They call themselves spooks," she informed him.
"They do?" Andy scratched an ear. "Have they thought that through?”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin

“Concussed for the second time, Hall dropped onto his back like a delivery of curtain rods.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Road To Ruin