Quotes from Marcus Sakey

Cooper pulled out a high-backed stool, sat down, tapped out the beat on the bar with his fingertips. He'd heard once that the essence of country music was three chords and the truth. Well, the three-chords part still stands.

They were innocent people. They could just do things you couldn't imagine. I can see code, do you get it? Algorithms that confound straights are just patterns to me. They come in my dreams. I dream the most beautiful programs never written.

everyone had their own reality, and yours was just one version.

Our daughter is not going to an academy." I MISS MY SON, her sign had read. "Period. I don't care if she's tier one. I don't care if she's the first tier zero in history and can manipulate space-time while shooting lasers from her belly button. She is not going to an academy.

Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn't mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything.

A gunfight in a graveyard, Jesus Christ.

It's easy. Everybody else on the field, they look where the opposing line is. I look where they're going to be. Then I just head somewhere else." —BARRY ADAMS, RUNNING BACK FOR THE CHICAGO BEARS, ON HOW HE WAS ABLE TO RUSH 2,437 YARDS IN A SINGLE SEASON, SHATTERING THE PREVIOUS RECORD (2,105, BY ERIC DICKERSON IN 1984)

of exchange, one that would be impervious to the gamesmanship of gifted individuals. By functioning as an auction house and averaging the bids to arrive at a final price

The more we fear, the more we need them. And the more we need them, the more powerful they get.

You don't even like smoking them. You just like thinking about smoking them.

It was a lot to convey with a look, but sometimes words murdered ideas. He

I see the method in your madness, but there's too much madness in your method.

That was the thing about terror: it made rational people act irrationally.

Even Christ hadn't been able to sell salvation to contented sinners.

the queasy purple of light pollution was lonelier than night.

He tried to grasp the thought, but it was like throwing his arms around smoke.

know Lee and Lisa. But you did.

He thought of getting out of bed but did not get out of bed. Why? What for? Everyone else seemed to know. Like there had been a meeting no one had told him about, where a secret was shared. Those who knew the secret did not wonder why they should get out of bed. He

Finally, as Winston Churchill said, "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." No matter how we feel about the war, the administration, or the policy, we owe our soldiers a debt of gratitude.

politicians had long known, people preferred short, catchy answers to complex ones, even if the short answers were oversimplified to the point of ridiculousness. Phrases

Ethan was partaking in that greatest of white-collar lies, "working from home," and not feeling at all bad about it.

Jesus, yes. I was educated by nuns. Long ago, when I was a human girl. I learned the Bible, studied the verses, memorized the teachings of Christ. When I passed, I expected to find him there." She stared out the window. "But in the centuries I walked beyond the world, I never saw him.

Roger, I don't know what your problem is. I don't know if it's a personal grudge, or ambition, or if you just need to get laid. But we have a fundamental difference of opinion on what our mission is. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do my actual, legal job." He started away.

A relationship like a short circuit, their mutual frailties feeding each other.