The Bourne Identity Quotes

“I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“The success of any trap lies in its fundamental simplicity. The reverse trap by the nature of its single complication must be swift and simpler still.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“What a man can't remember doesn't exist for him.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“I see things and I hear things I do not understand. I'm a skilled, resourceful... vegetable!”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“The easiest thing in the world is to convince yourself that you're right. As one grows old, it is easier still.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“You're on your own now. You are not helpless. You will find your way.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“How gratifying to be there when arrogance collapses. How much more so to be the instrument. (Alfred Gillette)”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“There'll come a moment when you think you can make it, and you'll try.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“The easiest thing in the world is to convince yourself that you are right. As one grows older, this is easier still.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“The silence lasted precisely five seconds, during which time eyes roamed other eyes, several throats were cleared, and no one moved in his chair. It was as if a decision were being reached without discussion: evasion was to be avoided. Congressman Efrem Walters, out of the hills of Tennessee by way of the Yale Law Review, was not to be dismissed with facile circumlocution that dealt with the esoterica of clandestine manipulations. Bullshit was out.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Accountants and economists are natural enemies. One views trees, the other forests, and the visions are usually at odds, as they should be.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Before taking her into the library, my wife told me she was an old friend in a marriage crisis. A fatuous lie; at her age there are no crises left in marriage, only acceptance and extraction. (General Villiers)”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“You appear to be a mass of contradictions; there’s a subsurface violence almost always in control, but very much alive.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“They lived with the intensity of two people aware that change would come. And when it came, it would come quickly; so there were things to talk about which could not be avoided any longer.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“I loathe him. He stands for everything I hate in Washington. The right schools, houses in Georgetown, farms in Virginia, quiet meetings at their clubs. They've got their tight little world and you don't break in--they run it all. The bastards. The superior, self-inflated gentry of Washington. They use other men's intellects, other men's work, wrapping it all into decisions bearing their imprimaturs. And if you're on the outside, you become part of that amorphous entity, a 'damn fine staff.' (Alfred Gillette)”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Mindless, stupid men! Playing with the lives of other men,”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“There were more preposterous vicissitudes in life than a single philosophy could conjure.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“If I haven't done badly, it's because I've become indispensable to too many like David Abbott. I have in my head a thousand facts they couldn't possibly recall. It's simply easier for them to place me where the questions are, where problems need solutions. (Alfred Gillette)”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“And I know now it will happen over and over again until it stops for you. You hear words, you see images, and fragments of things come back to you that you can’t understand, but because they’re there you condemn yourself. You always will condemn yourself until someone proves to you that whatever you were … there are others using you, who will sacrifice you. But there’s also someone else out there who wants to help you, help us. That’s the message!”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Give me enough medals and I’ll win you any war.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Wealth is relative to the amount of time one has to enjoy it.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“One balks, then agrees, then balks again only to agree again; that is the way one learns things.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“I mean, we’re all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren’t we?”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“You appear to be a mass of contradictions," Dr Washburn said. "There's a subsurface violence almost always in control, but very much alive. There's also a pensiveness that seems painful for you, yet you rarely give vent to the anger that pain must provoke.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“everything we knew, everything we felt!’ ‘Not quite everything,’ he said, touching her cheek. ‘I’m Jason to you, Bourne to me, because that’s the name I was given, and have to use it because I don’t have any other. But it’s not mine.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“They never listened until it was too late, and then only with stern forbearance and strong reminders of what might have been—had things been as they were perceived to be, which they were not.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“She's an old soldier's woman, and she has antennae for things that often escape the officer in the field.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Stop it! Do not think of things that … you cannot think about. Concentrate on what is. Now. You. Not what others say you are—not even what you may think you are. Only the now. And the now is a man who can give you answers.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“They drove back to Paris on the assumption that they would be far less obvious among the crowds of the city than in an isolated country inn. A blond-haired man wearing tortoise-shell glasses, and a striking but stern-faced woman, devoid of makeup, and with her hair pulled back like an intense graduate student at the Sorbonne, were not out of place in Montmartre. They took a room at the Terrasse on the rue de Maistre, registering as a married couple from Brussels. In the room, they stood for a moment, no words necessary for what each was seeing and feeling. They came together, touching, holding, closing out the abusive world that refused them peace, that kept them balancing on taut wires next to one another, high above a dark abyss; if either fell, it was the end for both. Bourne could not change his color for the immediate moment. It would be false, and there was no room for artifice. “We need some rest,” he said. “We’ve got to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.” They made love. Gently, completely, each with the other in the warm, rhythmic comfort of the bed. And there was a moment, a foolish moment, when adjustment of an angle was breathlessly necessary and they laughed. It was a quiet laugh, at first even an embarrassed laugh, but the observation was there, the appraisal of foolishness intrinsic to something very deep between them. They held each other more fiercely when the moment passed, more and more intent on sweeping away the awful sounds and the terrible sights of a dark world that kept them spinning in its winds. They were suddenly breaking out of that world, plunging into a much better one where sunlight and blue water replaced the darkness. They raced toward it feverishly, furiously, and then they burst through and found it. Spent, they fell asleep, their fingers entwined.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity