Quotes from Stephen Hunter

knowing that he himself looked so cowboylike to these Eastern people, in his best black Tony Lamas, a nice pair of Levi's, a pointed-collar shirt with string tie and a black Stetson, all under a sheepskin coat, his best coat.

Man without a gun has got no chance, Bob thought. Man has a gun, he has a chance.

Ä'hn ?i, múa nhiêu qúa?" "Ph?i roi, ch?c không có ngú?i m? dêm na?

Soldiers could no longer die in the thousands, much less the hundreds.

In any decent police state, they'd be a lot more efficient. In Red Spain, for example, toward the end, the discipline we had achieved was phenomenal. The Spaniards made excellent secret policemen.

That is why heroes are always so tragic, in the end. They are alone.

He had a mop of unkempt hair dark as any wine-dark sea; a vague sense of coffeehouse revolutionary to him; and quick, furtive eyes that missed little. He was one of those uncomfortably intense men most people find a little unnerving, as if his rhythms were a little too rapid, or perhaps he was too quickly wired through synapse, or bore too many unforgivable grudges, or was too quick to haggle to the death over a nickel.

You see, you make it so terrible for us," she said. "For the women. Because normal men want to be like you, they learn about you from movie versions of you, and they try for that same laconic spirit, that Hemingway stoicism. They manufacture themselves in your image but they don't have the guts or the power to bring it off. So they just exile themselves from us, pretending to be you and to have your power, and we can never reach them.

It can be foolish as all get-out, yes, ma'am. It doesn't make much sense. But I was just taught to hurt no man except the man who hurt me and mine. I have no other star to steer by. That and to do my duty as I understand it. If I followed those two rules, I'd be okay.

I'm too old to scare and too stubborn to budge.

Charles checked on his two snitches among the subversives. There were bascially two subversive groups in Blue Eye -Communists and Republicans, - and Charles confirmed quickly that neither had any revolutions planned

Finally, he said, "Anything. He was capable of anything. The truth is, even though they had his name on a plaque on the wall at Langley, Frenchy sold me to the Russians in 1974, when I was in Kurdistan. There were unpleasant consequences. He had no conscience. He was a great man who was capable of great evil, not that uncommon a combination. Whatever you think he did, he probably did. And worse.

I deal in lead, friend.

because he didn't want it going through regular departmental vetting procedures, not until he knew where it was leading and what it might uncover. He operated this way frequently; it was always better to begin low-profile and let the thing develop slowly, undistorted by the pressures of expectation.

I'm far too intelligent to be brave, thank you very much.

Richard, you got to be a man today.

The French word—actually it's a Norman word," said Colonel Bruce, "is bocage. Ancient by any standard. Won't trouble you with etymology. Basically it describes a terrain featuring a checkerboard of pasture, woodland, brush, hill, hedgerow, farmer's fields plowed or unplowed, lots of cows and bumblebees

Almost there! Those are not words any writer pines to hear. Much more preferable is "masterpiece" or "timeless brilliance" or "it shall live forever.

Thousands of people sleep secure in their beds each night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

There should be a way to surgically remove and store children's tongues as soon as they learn to speak," said Hugh. "Then, when they've graduated from college and distinguished themselves in the workplace, they could file a petition to have their tongues reattached." "I don't think that's feasible

If you make an assumption, we're in a world of confirmation bias, and clarity is the first casualty.

You cannot entertain a Norwegian, you cannot bore a German, and you cannot educate an American or a chimpanzee.

You are samurai, dog soldier, marine fool, crazy bastard, marshal of Dodge, commando, the country-western Hector.

Could he be an angel? Castro didn't believe in God, but he believed in God's angels, paradoxical or not. Possibly this man was such an angel.