Quotes from Robert Crais

Poitras came

Lucy said, "The law is an adversarial contest that defines justice as staying within the rules and seeing the game to its conclusion. Justice is reaching a conclusion. It has very little to do with right and wrong. The law gives us order. Only men and women can give us what you want to call justice.

The Predators The African lion makes a kill only twice out of every ten hunts. Leopards do better, catching their prey twenty-five percent of the time, and cheetahs do best of all the big cats, with a kill ratio of nearly fifty percent. The deadliest four-legged African predator is not a big cat. It cannot be outrun or outdistanced, its pursuit is relentless, and it captures its prey nine out of every ten hunts. The most dangerous predator in Africa is the wild dog.

Cole stared at the Pinocchio clock, then a small ceramic figurine of Jiminy Cricket a client had given him. Let your conscience be your guide. Everyone needed a Jiminy.

Kyle was my friend. You have to take care of your friends.

A woman I know gave me a build-it-yourself bird-feeder kit for Christmas, so I built it, and hung it from the eve of my roof high enough to keep the birds save from my cat. But the birds scratch the seed out of the feeder, then fly down to the deck and eat the seed. They know there's a cat, but still they go down to pick at the seed. When you think about it, people are often like this, too.

Because of the wind, the crows were pointing in one direction but traveling in another. I wondered if they knew it, and, knowing it, understood it, or if they were simply oblivious, carried along by a force that was felt but not seen. The same thing happens to people, but most of the time they don't know it, or when they know it, they think it an action of their own devising. They are usually wrong.

I leaned against the fence and crossed my arms and stared at her. After a while she looked over and said, "Why are you staring at me?" "Because I am the Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, and I am trying to figure out what to do." She blinked at me. "Jiminy Cricket," I said. "He was also Counselor in Moments of Temptation, and Guide Along the Straight and Narrow Path. You need that.

She was looking at me expectantly, so I nodded. "Sure." If you can at least look smart, people will assume that you are smart.

When long-term convicts were first released they often experienced a form of agoraphobia—a fear of open spaces. The prison counselors had a special name for this type of agoraphobia when they attributed it to convicts—the fear of life. Freedom gave a man choices and choices could be terrifying. Every choice was a potential failure.

The buzz cut and his friend came over. "You are coming with us." The buzz cut spoke the words with a careful, starched pronunciation that made me think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, only the accent was Russian. "Sez who?" I can slay 'em with these comebacks.

The attendant smiled a goodbye at the door. "You look much better." "I've achieved a measure of peace with my uncertainty.

Pike closed his eyes, and filled his lungs, then pushed with his diaphragm. He breathed deep again. Pranayamic breathing from the hatha yoga. Pike lost himself in a cool forest glade, dappled by sunlight filtered through lime green leaves. When he breathed, he smelled moss and sumac. His pulse slowed. He grew calm. He centered. Pike

She said, "Oh, Studly." I could see her smile. "The law is not about justice. You know that.

That Sunday, the sun floated bright and hot over the Los Angeles basin, pushing people to the beaches and the parks and into backyard pools to escape the heat. The air buzzed with the nervous palsy it gets when the wind freight-trains in from the deserts, dry as bone, and cooking the hillsides into tar-filled kindling that can snap into flames hot enough to melt an auto body.

In L.A., next to riots and earthquakes, fires are our largest spectator sport.

There is great audacity in the willingness to change, more than a little optimism, and a serious dose of courage. It

Throughout the meal Lucy would grin with the knowledge of her secret, and I would ask, "What?" and she would say, "You'll see." Then everyone stopped looking at Johnny Depp and turned toward the door. Lucy grinned wider, and I looked, too. Joe came over, gliding across the floor as the room parted for him. Tall men in sleeveless sweatshirts and dark glasses and brilliant red tattoos tend to stand out in Spago. Even Johnny Depp was looking.

to the bullet clips the same way every

as much as I'd like to lick chocolate syrup off your body, I want you to shut up.

Walsh looked at Cole. "Both of you?" Pike said, "He's going to have people. It'll look better if I have people, too." Cole pointed at himself. "I'm his people." Pike went on with it. "He thinks we're meeting to pick up the money. The real reason is to give him this." Stone showed them a handheld GPS locator.

Time had weight. The weight was growing.

John Chen was a paranoid. He knew this about himself, just as he knew he had low self-esteem, a poor self-image, and a cornucopia of insecurities. But he also knew an enemy when he saw one. Even paranoids had enemies.

John was watching her walk away when Harriet found him. "John!" Chen jumped off his stool and flashed an unctuous smile, accelerating from zero to full-on asskiss faster than a screaming Tesla.