Quotes from Don Winslow

They got the absolute freedom to choose what we want them to.

The people, they don't know what it takes sometimes to keep them safe and it's better that they don't.

Deliver my soul from the sword; my love from the power of the dog. Psalms 22:20

He's hunted enough guys to know that their own heads can be their worst enemies. They start seeing things that aren't there, then, worse, not seeing things that are. They worry and worry, and chew on their own insides, until, when you do track them down, they're almost grateful. By this time, they've been killed so many times in their minds that the real thing is a relief.

The good things in this world aren't done by saints. They're done by compromised people doing the best they can.

He who speaks least has the most power.

We go off the meds and elect Richard Nixon, the Nurse Ratched of the American political psych ward.

A man does the right thing, does his duty and does it bravely.

The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDS, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of these wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead—everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real. —Bruce Jackson Keynote address "Media and War" symposium, University of Buffalo November 17–18, 2003

Betrayals start that way, with lies hidden in the shadows of silence.

There are the gods of place and the gods of commerce, and if you have to bet who's going to win out, put your money on money every time.

Well, that's a big chunk of truth, Eddie thinks. The Mexicans have finally found a drug that white trash likes and can afford. And one thing you ain't never gonna run out of is white trash. That stuff makes itself. They get made in the backseats of junk cars, and then they live in them.

Juárez is surprisingly cold in the winter, miserably hot in the summer, and you just hope that either spring or autumn falls on a weekend so you get to enjoy it.

Pablo Mora has one of those hangovers where you see yourself in the mirror and think you look familiar.

The bozo who's going to go early John Woo all over the manicured lawns and flower beds just to show he doesn't give a fuck about convention.

Their only weapon is shame, if the powerful can even feel it.

Keller has long believed that you have to be lucky to be good, but not good to be lucky.

Rhode Island likes things difficult, hard to find. The other unofficial state motto—"If you were supposed to know, you'd know.

Satan can only tempt you with what you already have.

Life, he muses, always gives you an excuse to take what you want anyway.

That's all right, Neal thought. Every one of us is at least two people.

Giorgio cannot leave a bottle undrunk or an attractive woman unfucked, and those activities tend to get in the way of revolution.

You shop in malls instead of mercados, you watch football instead of fútbol, you become another consumer in a giant machine that consumes consumers.

Nothing is emptier than an empty house. The vacant kitchen chair, the imprint on a sofa cushion, the pillow unsplayed with hair, absent of scent. An unspoken thought, an unshared laugh, the silence of no footsteps, no sighs, no breaths.