Quotes from David Baldacci

Being alive and living were also two distinct things

Damn it, why couldn't I have a photographic memory! Thank God you don't, Caleb exclaimed in a disgusted tone. What makes you say that? Reuben demanded hotly. Because then she'd be calling you Ruby, and I'd have to be sick to my stomach.

Longer-term strategies were the professional domain of others, mostly political types. These folks made good assassins, too. Only instead of bullets, they were basically bribed to enact laws by other folks with more money than was good for them. And they harmed a lot more people than Robie ever could.

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant.

When you lie a rush of adrenaline to the capillaries in the nose causes it to itch. So people who are lying tend to involuntarily scratch it. - John Puller

belt. "But it didn't happen.

But then again, our life is what we make it, right? Bad choices. You can't blame others for that.

tersely. Then the line

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

And asking people to take the time to read and actually think about stuff? Heaven forbid.

Still, he was your father." "Actually, in my mind at least, he had lost that title. It's not supposed to be simply granted, Puller, because a sperm happened to hit an egg. You have to earn it. He chose not

He had started to forget what it was like to hit one out of the park. After Sullivan

Money's not everything." "It is if you never had much of it.

Once the emotions are gone, analytics are all you have left.

his former boss at CIA, Simpson had still been sitting in death, only with him instead of a car seat it was a ladder-back chair in the kitchen that was now all mottled with the dead man's blood. The shot had come from the unfinished chunk of construction across the street. The hour of execution—for

How did you get on to her?

presidents had to make

Books were meant to be read, not displayed on a shelf for decoration.

Pine also spotted many large and elaborately constructed single-family homes on the beachfront. They looked fairly new and were undoubtedly expensive to build. But then again, it was oceanfront property and they weren't making any more of that.

The only thing potentially worse than not being able to see the forest for the trees is not being able to see the trees because of the forest. —Anonymous

that that won't be the case." "I don't trust

Then the question becomes what do we

But for what reason? Council

Fall was nearly here, but summer was still hanging on, dragging its heat-flamed and moisture-rich knuckles across the stark tundra.