Quotes from Robert B. Parker

Sometimes a secret kept causes pain for one," I said. "And a secret shared causes pain for two.

Just like human life. You want something so bad you make it hard to get.

Maybe they were all either pimps or whores. Maybe it was life's classifying principle, maybe I had seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.

No wonder you look tired," she said when I finished. We were on the last bottle of champagne and most of the food was gone. She was easy to tell things to. She understood quickly, she supplied missing pieces without asking questions, and she was interested. She wanted to hear.

her hair. But fantasy

Professionally," Susan said, "I'm not at all sure that love, as such, is not simply a complex of human impulses: need, identification, possessiveness, fear of loneliness, impulse to replicate the family from which you sprang, sexual desire, anger, the desire to punish, the desire to be punished.

fear that if I'm dependent on anything or anyone I can't control my life.

Absolutely," Susan said. "It certifies that you're pussy whipped." "I brought you." "I rest my case," Susan said.

I have never seen any. He's as good as anyone I ever saw at what he does. But he never seems happy or sad or frightened or elated. He never, in the twenty-some years I've known him, here and there, has shown any sign of love or compassion. He's never been nervous. He's never been mad.

Suze," I said, "I'm a middle-aged man." "I know," Susan said. "I see it as a challenge." We went into the bedroom and lay close in the bed, sipping the champagne and watching the late movie in the air-conditioned darkness. Life may be flawed but sometimes things are just right. The late movie was The Magnificent Seven. When Steve McQueen looked at Eli Wallach and said, "We deal in lead, friend," I said it along with him.

To be looked at by Susan, naked, with those eyes, over a glass of pink champagne, was all I knew on earth, and all I had to know.

The thing I like about Irish whiskey is that the more you drink the smoother it goes down. Of course that's probably true of antifreeze as well, but illusion is nearly all we have.

To kill a man you need three things: the gun and the balls?" "We can get the gun okay

I was in my office tilted back in my chair with my feet up drinking a cup of coffee and eating my second corn muffin

Mostly I thought about Susan with her clothes off. This would solve nearly any problem I had

less reliable than Dennis Rodman.

I could feel the tension radiate from my solar plexus and jangle along the nerve circuitry. It had nothing to do with the weather.

Susan smiled the smile she always smiled when you knew she hadn't the slightest interest in what you were saying, and she knew it, and she knew you knew it.

She laughed in the darkness. "Of course it is," she said. "That's the story of your life. What doesn't matter. It's how you look when you do it.

She rearranged her legs again. If she kept doing that, it was possible that I might begin to bugle like a stallion. Which would not be dignified.

Paul a smart kid," Hawk said. "I know." "And he pretty strong," Hawk said. "He is." "Got from his uncle," Hawk said. "Uncle Hawk?" "Sho' nuff." "Jesus Christ," I said.

It was just a sense that in almost all my dealings with almost everyone I'd talked with, there was another story being told that I couldn't hear.

The woman looked at me as if I had proposed sodomy.

Did William Powell take Myrna Loy to a Dunkin' Donut shop?" "He didn't know enough," I said. I raised my coffee cup toward her.