Quotes from John Sandford

The regular campaign staff, including the regular campaign manager, had no idea that the shadow staff existed.

They were the rumors that might follow any rich man who stayed to himself, Virgil thought, and who at the same time was thoroughly hated.

depression was to be feared—and he could feel it sniffing around outside his door, looking for a way in.

argued that depression is a terrible word for the affliction. Should be called something like mindstorm. Still, Lucas's intuition told him that mindstorms didn't just show up: they needed something to chew on.

SCHIFFER WAS LEAVING, Dannon asked Carver to do a serious look around the yard. One of the radar buzzers had been going off, Dannon said, and he hadn't been able to isolate why. "Probably another goddamn skunk," Carver said. He pulled his jacket back on and went to look.

Marlys was a sturdy woman in her fifties, white curls clinging to her scalp like vanilla frosting. She wore rimless glasses, a homemade red-checked gingham dress, and low-topped Nikes. Short-nosed and pale, she had a small pink mouth that habitually pursed in thought, or disapproval.

All right. I'll keep it quiet." "Attaboy. This thing is going to work out, Lucas. For us. It really shouldn't matter whether we get the killer this week or in two weeks. What matters right now is to try to square up this election. Let's focus on that: you do what you do, and let me try to get things straight with the voters.

They both knew what they were thinking, though neither said it: Taryn Grant had what it took to be president. She had the business background, she understood economics and finance, she had the money wrapped up, she looked terrific, she had a mind that understood the necessary treacheries: a silken Machiavelli.

The local farmers, of course, were bitching because the bean and corn harvests were going to be huge and the prices depressed. Of course, if it hadn't rained, they'd be bitching because their crops were small, even if the prices were high. You couldn't win with farmers.

GRAY-EYED COLE SAT in his bedroom window, looking out over the road, a scoped Ruger 10/22 in his hands. Squirrel rifle. Below him, a quilt hung on the wire clothesline, airing out. Before the end of the day, the quilt would smell like early-summer fields, with a little gravel dust mixed in. A wonderful smell, a smell like home.

THE DAY WAS PERFECT: low eighties, bluebird sky, the slightest touch of a breeze. If the Minnesota August lasted all year, nobody would live anywhere else.

They gathered around the living room TV and the media woman plugged a thumb drive into the digital port and brought the advertisement up: Smalls was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, bankerish, but with a pale blue shirt open at the collar. He was in his Minnesota Senate office, with a hint of the American flag to his right, a couple of red and white stripes—not enough of a flag display to invite sarcasm, but it was there.

If a Martian were watching our television shows, he'd conclude that guns were more common than hammers. They're not evil themselves--they're tools--but everywhere you go, bad people have them. It behooves the righteous to at least know how they work.

You gotta try harder to be kind, man. We're all trapped on this earth together.

There was an old joke about a small town: a real small town meant that you didn't have to use the turn signals on your car, because anybody behind you already knew where you were going…

Uh-uh, not the way it works," Means said. He was a fleshy man, with nicotine-stained teeth and drooping cheeks. And, "Say, didn't you work for Virgil Flowers for a while, up in Minnesota?

I dream of an America where a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.

But as cops began to develop FBI-like attitudes, and to build FBI-like fortresses, as they sealed themselves away in patrol cars, as they fended off contact with the public, they began to resemble a paramilitary force, rather than peace officers.

He thought Emily Dickinson was perhaps the best writer America had ever produced; but on this day, heading east out of the Cities, then south down the river, he thought of how some of the writers, Poe and Hemingway in particular, used the weather to create the mood and reflect the meanings of their stories.

here. Nobody's

Though wickedly aware of his surroundings, he didn't look around; looking around attracted the eye. People who saw him would ask themselves, "Why's that guy looking around like that?" He'd learned not to do it.

Haven't seen so much screaming and yelling since I went to a goat-fuck out in South

grew up with guns and I needed them. Most people don't. All these high-capacity guns flashed by the nutcakes? They're a disaster. If I had my way, there'd be no guns but single-shot hunting rifles and single-shot shotguns. You could do all the target shooting you want with those. You could hunt to your heart's content. Of course, you'd actually have to learn how to hunt or how to hit a target, and most of those dimwits don't want to be bothered.

Hey, people get killed from time to time, that's just the way of the world, let's not bust a budget about it . . .