Quotes from Robert B. Parker

Hawk and I lay behind the rock

You guys look like you shipped back here in a crate," Quirk said. "Clothes are fresh from the dryer," I said. "Just need a little ironing." "So does your life," Belson said.

And Quirk's a captain now," he said. "Captain Quirk?" The motorcycle cop grinned. "Captain Quirk," he said.

There stirred behind her face a sense of life and purpose and mirth and caring that made her seem to be in motion even as she was still. There was a kind of rhythm to her, even in motionless repose. I said, "Energy contained by grace, maybe.

Tough is what you do, more than it is how you feel about it before or after," I said. "You're tough enough.

Vinnie and Hawk lounged in the theater lobby, blending in to the theatrical scene like two coyotes at a poultry festival.

Susan told me on the way out," Hawk said, "how you been spreading your charm around town and now they ready to lynch your ass." "Charm can only carry you so far," I said.

Businessmen learn the way businessmen are supposed to be. Professors learn the way professors are supposed to be. Construction workers learn how construction workers are supposed to be. They spend their lives trying to be what they're supposed to be and being scared they aren't. Quiet desperation.

She walked a ways down the concourse, and looked back and waved and then turned a corner and was out of sight. I still stood for a moment, looking at the last place I had seen her, being careful not to be routine, while I became the other guy again, the one I was without her.

The ways of the Lord," I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant." "Adler?" "Theodor Reik, I think.

Candy nodded absently. "Okay," she said. "What shall I wear?" "A gun," I said.

To imply something," Jesse said, "you have to know something. I'm just trying to learn.

Loss is the price we pay for progress," she said. "Only as we leave things behind do we move forward.

E.M. Forster, who said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray his country.

So far so good. I had a recently widowed mother and her orphaned son crying hysterically. Maybe for an encore I could shoot the family dog.

Her toenails were painted. It didn't help much. Never saw a toenail I liked.

When you thought about it, silence was rarely silent. Silence was the small noises you heard when the larger noises disappeared.

I do the best I can to approve and disapprove only of my own behavior. I don't always succeed, but I try. I'm trying now and I'm going to keep at it.

called Evan Malone at the number Epstein had given me and got his wife, and made an appointment to come up to his place on Bow Lake to talk with him. On the drive up Route 93, I called Epstein on the cell phone.

Sandy's face was very close to mine in the crowded room. She had a wide mouth and a lot of teeth. She had turned in her seat so that she had one thigh on each side of my leg. Her chest was against my arm. In another minute we wouldn't have to go anywhere to have sex.

Are you objectifying that young woman?" I said. "Absolutely not," Hawk said. "I thinking about her with her clothes off.

Get far enough away and it looks kinda pretty, don't it?" she said. "You only get order from a distance. Close up is always messy." "Yeah," I said, "but your own life is always close up. You only see other people's lives at long range.

The urban renewers had struck again. They'd evicted me, a fortune-teller, and a bookie from the corner of Mass. Ave. and Boylston, moved in with sandblasters and bleached oak and plant hangers, and last I looked appeared to be turning the place into a Marin County whorehouse.

Belson came into the apartment with some crime-scene people and two homicide detectives. "This guy," Charlie said, and looked at his notebook, "Spenser. He was impersonating a police officer." Belson glanced at him. "We all thought that," Belson said, "when he was a cop.