Quotes from Richard North Patterson

men with guns stole our future by killing the best of our leaders, again and again—in one single tragic year, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. And day after day, death upon death, they steal our dreams by killing the people we love.

No, we have an epidemic of death because our government has been bullied and bribed by a powerful lobby which values guns more than human life.

morning light through his windshield was pale and tired; the city had the desultory, cluttered look of a living room after a drunken party; Martin

when all else fails, he thought, make an offering to the god of laughter.

A torpid sun seeped through a haze of humidity

I've become leery of religious advocacy for laws which only value a 'life' until it's born.

Robinson could do with three or four facts what prehistorians achieved with stray dinosaur bones:

A child at risk made trust a luxury, each day uncertain, the mere sound of a telephone ringing a reason to flinch.

Nothing will change until people with the power really try to imagine the lives of other folks beyond their own direct experience.

who says they're all criminals? -he parried- some might actually be innocent. others may need someone to explain them. there are reasons why we become the way we are, which often aren't apparent on the surface of our lives

whatever you do - his father continued - dream big, take risks, and work harder than whoever else is doing the same thing. Do you know why I've succeeded? not because of talent, I've known writers more gifted than I am. But I was driven to wring every molecule out of whatever talent I possessed. Success is not something you aspire to, you have to grab it by the throat.

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'" He

religion also teaches kindness, personal responsibility, and the grace not to judge people by the worst moments in their lives.

I have a life. A real one. And not all of it is with you.

The federal government practiced redlining—disqualifying Black neighborhoods for mortgages backed by the government. It would only ensure property covered by restrictive covenants. It cut off Black areas by building highways around them, which made it easier for white people to run away to the suburbs. The neighborhoods left behind have a fraction of white wealth and an oversupply of substandard housing, ill health, infant mortality, and lousy schools.

If you can't stop time, make it vanish.

Writing seems like the only job where what you think and feel really matters.

Anyhow, it strikes me as a little archaic, like 'helpmate

The next morning the squalid weather

Whoever imagined that ours was a government of laws and not men

My pro-life colleagues love them till they're born but don't mind a righteous execution afterward.

Hell, with money you can even get away with being liberal. But if you're poor and liberal, people just think you're peculiar. Oh, they'll never be sure whether you're a liberal because you're poor or poor because you're a liberal, but they're damn sure it's one or the other.

a Supreme Court which is careless of the law can diminish respect for law. But there are clearly times when what might have been acceptable to Thomas Jefferson becomes unacceptable to us, and whether in 1954 Jefferson might have made Sally Hemings drink at the water fountain marked 'Coloreds Only' becomes irrelevant. At best.

The rulings of the past do not always apply in the present.