Quotes from David Baldacci

If you really love each other, you'd be surprised what you can accomplish.

It's not so much that time heals all wounds, as it is the passage of the years that lets us make peace with our grief in our own way.

They were not rich. They were not powerful. They were truly the forgotten.

It had been so long since we were a family that I had almost forgotten the joy that came with having one. All the small and large moments, many that I had taken for granted while they were occuring, no doubt bolstered by the certainty that there would be many more. Yet such endearing and memorable engagements in life are promised to no one. They come and go and one has to be aware that there is no assurance they will ever come again. It made me tremble to think what I had lost.

He knew exactly what it was like to lose a child. And that fact wouldn't matter in the least in this circumstance. There could be no commiseration among such people despite the seeming commonality of loss, because it was actually each parent's totally unique hell.

That was the way it was, the burial ritual. You set them in the earth and walked away to keep living, until it was your turn to be left behind.

Why are trains so popular at Christmas? People get on to meet their country over the holidays.

Dark, cool, musty, smoky, where light fell funny and everyone looked like someone you knew or wanted to know. Or, more likely, wanted to forget.

The avenues he had taken as a young man had pretty much dictated what the remaining years of his life would be like.

He got into the car thinking that people were interesting. Sometimes they just couldn't distinguish the truth from bullshit. Sometimes they didn't want to. It was often easier just to believe a lie.

Number of children fathered got little enough to do with being a good daddy.' - Louisa Mae Cardinal

They made you hate everyone, even the ones who were like you. That is what they do, so the prisoners will not rise up against them.

It was not known precisely how many labor camps there were in North Korea, although the international consensus was six. The fact that they were numbered and those numbers reached at least as high as twenty-two was an indicator of their pervasiveness. At least two hundred thousand North Koreans, or nearly one percent of the entire population, called these labor camps home.

But in the end, you can't kill what you can't see coming . . .

Robie took a deep, cleansing breath. He had never played well with others. For the last dozen years he had worked in almost total isolation. He preferred it that way. He was better alone than with a team. That's just how he was built.

In his trip to Bethlehem Mark Twain had reported that all sects of Christians, except Protestants, had chapels under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, he also observed that one group dared not trespass on the other's territory, proving beyond doubt, he noted, that even the grave of the Savior couldn't inspire peaceful worship among different beliefs.

But the fact is, as one grows close to death, the only thing that matters is family. I hope you can see that.

It had always bothered Tom that women thought they could win an argument with a man simply by appealing to his baser instincts, by holding out the mere possibility of award-winning carnal knowledge. It was the gender equivalent of a preemptive nuclear strike. He thought it unfair and, quite frankly, disrespectful of the entire male population.

She apparently didn't expect any trouble but she also never expected everything to go perfectly either. That was a good rule to live by Robie knew. Because perfection was rarely the case in the field.

Why the hell don't kids call their parents anymore? Why don't they answer their phones? Why all this crazy texting shit?

Businesses don't give a crap about creating jobs. They care about making money. With robots, you'll just need some tech guys to maintain and repair them.

I had my papers in for detective before I left. I've got my forensics certifications. I notice stuff. I sweat the details. And this is my town," she added. "I know everybody here. And I mean everybody, because there aren't that many of us.

Things sometimes did not work out. Even if you wanted them to more than anything else. You couldn't will someone to love you back. You had to move on.

Zero Day was here.