The Paris Diversion Quotes

“Back home”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“for him to make, no actions to take.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“flowers, foliage, a few tomatoes in August, thyme and rosemary for anyone who wants it, limitless mint.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“So many people are defined by their bootstraps, by the lowliness of their origins, people who have no choice but to try to climb out, climb up. Dexter. Kate too. But by the sheer luck of birth, Hunter had been afforded the choice to do absolutely anything. Instead of using that immense good fortune to do something positive for the planet, for mankind—or at least something creative—the guy chose as his goal simply to get richer, to slide through life with the greased ease of an aristocrat.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“He takes another sip. Either buying time or trying to avoid the topic entirely, to wear down his wife with tedious pauses. But he should know better. Kate does not wear down.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“Okay,” he finally says, followed by a phrase that Hunter hears all the time, the phrase that people always use when confronted by men like Hunter Forsyth who are dissatisfied with something, with anything, men who are not in the habit of accepting their own dissatisfaction. How many times has Hunter heard this phrase? Thousands? “Let me see what I can do.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“His power doesn’t derive from his good looks, or his fine clothes, or even his money, it’s everything together—the way he holds his body, the way he walks and talks, the way he maintains eye contact and a firm grip, the way he accepts the ministrations of the servant class, the people who do things for him, not merely because they’re paid to but sometimes just because they understand, innately, that this is how the world works.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“Plenty of people have great ideas, lying on the couch. The trick is getting up.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“She kept remembering a piece of his advice, something he’d taught her when she was new and still figuring out how to make her way in the Agency, how to make things happen in the world: a carefully orchestrated disaster can be the perfect diversion.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“Before the kid was born, she couldn’t have fathomed the extent to which parenting meant ceding control. For a long while, especially when you’re a child yourself, it looks like the opposite: parenthood is control. Untrue. So much of a parent’s life is determined by the biological imperatives and whims of this tiny inchoate animal.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“And then to exacerbate matters there’d been the election of that unqualified unprepared irresponsible lunatic as president, a man who’s capable of Lord knows what irrational behavior that could produce life-threatening conditions at any given moment, anywhere in the world.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“It is when all the options are bad that true cowardice reveals itself.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion

“Evil, in his experience, is a temporary subjective condition, not a permanent objective fact.”
― Chris Pavone, The Paris Diversion