Two Nights in Lisbon Quotes

“Nothing is more important to democracy than holding the powerful accountable for their transgressions.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“her legs growing tired. She feels a twinge in her left ankle, the one she sprained last fall when she was knocked over by someone’s Labrador on the village green. That injury was just the latest insult: the thumb jammed by a heavy carton of books, the rotator cuff torn while changing a light bulb, the plantar fasciitis in both feet just because, the compressed disk in her neck for the same unfair nothing of a reason. “What can I tell you?” the chiropractor said. “Welcome to middle age.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“cruising around Europe, Berlin or Prague or Bucharest, the places where people fritter away their youth, before they realize that youth is not something to fritter away.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“traits that we admire and envy—youth and beauty and privilege—these are not accomplishments.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“Sometimes what looks like panic is really rational self-preservation.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“Cynical,” Ariel says, “is a naïve person’s word for clear-eyed.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“It’s unfair for the burden to rest entirely on the victims’ shoulders. It shouldn’t be only the accusers who risk everything; it shouldn’t be only the aggrieved who grieve. Other people need to take real action. Not just stand in solidarity, not just post on Instagram or hang a banner or donate fifty bucks.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“Men often try to reframe temper as hysteria, to recast righteousness as overreaction, as hypersensitivity, as irrationality.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“How are you supposed to plan for life’s most important conversations? Do you set them up, construct a stage, establish expectations?”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“The men would stand off to the side, holding bottles of beer by the necks, discussing fishing and football, taxes and trucks.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“There was, just maybe, a way to win. By inventing her own game, and rigging it herself, then making it impossible for someone to refuse to play.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“There’s such a thing as being problematically good-looking.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“A fact is a fact, and there's no such thing as an alternative.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“Reportage doesn't mean what it used to. People already believe what they believe, and these days they go to the media to assure them that they're right, not to learn otherwise.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“Like "thoughts and prayers," it's what people say when what they plan to do is nothing.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“She supposes there are many different ways to love. Hate is much simpler.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“Volatile men tend to create their own wide orbits of tolerance. No one wants to confront them.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“Everything must be perfect, all the time. Or at least appear that way. Which is really the only sort of perfection: the apparent sort.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“She had been silenced by operant conditioning, by receiving the same response again and again, like an electroshocked lab rat, or a beaten dog. A disbelieved woman.”
― Chris Pavone, Deux nuits à Lisbonne

“Insecurity and homophobia are so highly correlated that Ariel suspects they're the same thing.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“It’s an ever-expanding lexicon of grievance.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“On the screen, this man is wearing a bespoke suit and a smug grin, holding one of those ceremonial checks, a piece of cardboard the size of a beach towel, showily donating a million dollars to adult literacy. This is a charade, and not even a complicated one, nor convincing, just another everyday lie that everyone pretends to not notice. Another strategy for protecting the hefty bulk of his fortune by shaving off a sliver here and a sliver there, giving away little bits to ensure that he can keep the rest. One of the many manipulations available to men like him, created by men like him for the benefit of men like him, the tax structure and capital gains and mortgage-interest deductions, marriage and religion and capitalism and so-called representative democracy, all constructed so men like him could be not only the players but the house as well, everything about the game fixed in their favor, with not only backup schemes but also backups to the backups, and”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“People don’t change, not that much. They just become more like themselves.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“This is a stark divide in the intelligence community: The older generation continues to prioritize human intelligence above all, the type of intel that’s gathered in face-to-face interactions, interrogations, manipulations, betrayals. For the younger, though, it’s all about the digital world. If they can find everything virtually, why do anything else?”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“And there’s an increasingly loud chorus calling for an end to punitive nondisclosure agreements in cases of sexual assault, which have long been used by wealthy men to avoid the repercussions of criminal behavior, and to ensure a lifetime of silence from their accusers.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“Ariel can’t help but notice that Persephone hasn’t relinquished her cell phone; the device is still in her palm, always there, thumb hovering above screen, cocked, ready to tap and scroll and sweep, to move on. Her generation never had a chance. Their schooling should have included dedicated training on how to put down your phone, exercises on how to focus on talking to real people in person. But no one knew how bad it would become.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“they will wait here. For your safety.” Just another one of those lies that we pretend isn’t. Ariel and John nod, tacitly contributing to the pervasive culture of dishonesty, reinforced every time we hear a blatant lie and refuse to challenge it. Refuse even to acknowledge to our own selves that it’s a lie.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“Ariel’s landline is ringing, a rare event. The only reason she still has this line is because somehow her overall service would be more expensive without it, a state of affairs that makes it clear that someone is getting away with something at her expense. The telecom companies don’t even try to hide it anymore.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“The post is also trending on Instagram and Facebook in ways that appear to be similarly manipulated. Within two or three days, this rumor will have been put in front of nearly every set of eyeballs in America.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon

“Not Ariel. She has now been in a digital blackout for twenty-four hours, the longest she can remember since the advent of smartphones. Since the demise of privacy.”
― Chris Pavone, Two Nights in Lisbon