Quotes from Marcus Sakey

No matter how smoothly you tossed a stone into water, there were always ripples. Alongside

First they came for the revolutionaries, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a revolutionary. Then they came for the intellectuals, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an intellectual. Then they came for the tier ones, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a tier one. Then they came for the brilliants, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a brilliant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

The truth was, everything in life came down to intentions and results. Cooper's intentions in killing Peters and releasing the video had been good; the results had been a disaster. Did that make his intentions wrong? If so, that meant morality was really only a way of talking about how we wished things were. Hope, empathy, idealism—maybe they didn't matter. Maybe the only thing that counted was results.

you are going to find that the heights you've attained make for a long fall if you don't understand the mountain.

There was a rumor—a joke? Hard to tell at the DAR—that the fluorescent bulbs were the result of a multimillion-dollar program specially engineered to offer the most hopeless light possible. Cooper didn't know about that, but they did make everyone look two weeks dead.

That was the thing about terror: it made rational people act irrationally. From a certain perspective, the fear was more destructive than the actual killing.

Funny, there had been a time when building things was what America did. From massive dams to towering skyscrapers, from mechanized factories to moon rockets, the nation had created, had viewed that as part of the national identity.

Because artists are more dangerous than murderers. The most prolific serial killer might have dozens of victims, but poets can lay low entire generations.

No matter how smoothly you tossed a stone into water, there were always ripples.

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

NO TRESPASSING and SOLICITORS WARMLY GREETED WITH GUNFIRE signs