Quotes from Don Winslow

I'm sorry to pull you out of your classes, but your adviser understands," Kitteredge said. "He's a friend of the family." So that's it, Neal thought. You bought me; you own me.

All this and the wines coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan's about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, 'Tell me why I shouldn't kill you.'  One motherfuck of an essay question. 

Cops fall into two categories—grass eaters and meat eaters. The grass eaters are the small-timers—they take a cut from the car-towing companies, they get a free coffee, a sandwich. They take what comes, they're not aggressive. The meat eaters are the predators, they go after what they want—the drug rips, the mob payoffs, the cash.

All this and the wine's coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan's about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, 'Tell me why I shouldn't kill you.'  One motherfuck of an essay question. 

Better to get away light than get caught heavy.

Why do women love to talk about love?" Giorgio asks. "Why don't men, is more the question," Ana says.

Guns and dope are the soup and sandwich of American crime.

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees.

Opiates are a response to pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, economic pain. He's looking at all three. The Heroin Trifecta.

Mateo runs up and Pablo hugs him. It's amazing, he thinks, that he never gets tired of that sensation.

We are all cripples, Keller thinks, limping together through this crippled world. It's what we owe to each other.

Art can't decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it's a tragic, bloody farce.

New York City has the strictest gun laws in the country but that doesn't make any difference because all the guns come in from the outside, up the "Iron Pipeline.

The old dictum is that "no plan survives first contact with the enemy," and the special-ops team is already regrouping and improvising a new plan. He hears the sharp, disciplined fire

Our ends know our beginnings but the reverse isn't true.

You need the money, the cash flow, but it's more than that, admit it. You love the game. The thrill, the taking off the bad guys, even the danger, the idea that you might get caught.

It's a bitter lesson—you think you can rent your soul, but it's always a sale, and all sales are final.

Beware the hospitality of the sociopath.

Together, Ben and Chon make up a collective pacifist. Ben is the paci Chon is the fist.

Crime 101: "Trust" is a word generally used by convicts and usually in the past tense—i.e., "I trusted him.

He seeks God in the same, although he has come to believe that truth and God are the same. Truth

Accept grace when it's offered

So you got Black Lives Matter up your ass, every citizen a journalist with a cell-phone camera at the ready, and you go to work each day with the whole world thinking you're a murdering racist. Okay

A border is something that divides us but also unites us; there can be no real wall, just as there is no wall that divides the human soul between its best impulses and its worst.