Quotes from C.J. Box

semitrailer

She grunted her assent. He said, sotto voce, "And don't forget you've got a mission tonight." "Which tent is his?" she asked softly. That meant she was still with him, even though she was angry. But she still wouldn't meet his eyes. "The blue and green Mountain Hardwear." "The one with the stain on the side of it?" "That's the one." She nodded that she understood.

Coyotes did coyote things.

I got to experience socialism firsthand. At first, it's seductive. Free health care, free college, all that. But nothing is free. And anything that's free has no value. Zero means zero.

Joe instantly lost hearing in his right ear, and it was replaced by a dull roar.

JOE HATED DENVER TRAFFIC and he kept both of his hands on the wheel and his pickup in the far right lane as cars zipped around him. It was as if every driver on the five-lane freeway had just downed three shots of vodka and had been handed the keys to Daddy's sports car.

no matter how cold it got in the mountain west, it was colder and damper in the Midwest. Maybe, he thought, it was why they were so damned tough.

Jed knew that trying to stand between a hormone-fueled teenager and his love interest was akin to walking between a grizzly sow and her cubs, and Walt didn't look dumb enough to do either. Walt's distraction would help Jed, though, and that's all that mattered.

Actually," Joe said, "you're right on time.

the peregrine falls through the sky, gaining more and more velocity until its speed reaches more than two hundred miles an hour. It is the fastest creature on earth,

Jim Harrison's novels, John McPhee's nonfiction, Flannery O'Connor's short stories, and the crime novels of John Sandford, Ken Bruen, and T. Jefferson Parker.

His face reddened and his eyes bulged. He looked like he was ready to explode. She looked away because the intensity of his glare was almost violent in itself. Then he surprised her by snorting again and he laughed softly, shaking his head. He seemed suddenly more interested in the untouched shot and beer than he was in her confession.

It looks like a cow pissing on a flat rock, this rain.

He looked up to make sure everyone was paying attention. They were, although only Tristan Glode and K. W. Wilson seemed rapt. The rest looked pliable.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. —WILLIAM RALPH INGE, OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS, 1922

It's not worth it trying to push back because they hold all the cards. They've got paid lawyers and regulators with no personal financial stake in this building like we do. They can sit at their desks and tell us what we can and can't do, and they can drag this out for years or until we're both bankrupt.

Not that Cody replied. In fact, he hadn't acknowledged even receiving any of the texts or e-mails she'd sent in the past hour. She speculated that he was out of cell phone range, busy with something, or simply unresponsive and rude. All three were distinct possibilities. She began to understand why Larry Olson, Cody's former partner, became so frustrated with him.

You should get her a dog,

Two young mothers were standing in the aisle and they turned when they heard him, and one of them lifted a finger to her lips to shush him. She was wearing a track suit and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was vaguely attractive but already angry with him, so he looked to the other one. She was tall and slim with auburn hair and kind brown eyes and a nice mouth. Her face was wide open. She was pretty in a natural, athletic way.

Avoiding hard work required discipline and a complete awareness of his surroundings, as well as an intuitive sense of when to be in the wrong place when extra time or effort was demanded. Like golf or fly-fishing, it was a lifelong pursuit that he knew he might never perfect but he could certainly continue to improve.

Stride Winterblue gum (every drunk's secret gum)

Inuit people had scores of words to describe snow, and that had always impressed

She swallowed the last of her cup of decaf and leaned forward to her laptop and keyed in the passwords for ViCAP—one for the department, one for her personally—and followed the prompts and she was in.

road into the trees. He switched hands often. Ron said, "Sometimes you just have to tell women things even if you don't really mean it. I think they know you're bullshitting