Quotes from Marcus Sakey

down too much beef jerky. What he'd really been

one to see a trucker

Okay. Life isn't like the movies—you know, how the bad guys just want to be bad guys, villains. In real life, there aren't very many villains. Mostly, people believe they're doing the right thing. Even the ones who are doing bad things usually believe they're heroes, that whatever terrible thing they're doing is to prevent something worse. They're scared.

He hadn't really known them, and like most people, he was just solipsistic enough to not truly believe they existed when he wasn't there. We're all background characters in someone else's movie. Maybe

either. Maybe, like him, she was both a pro and a person, both a job and a life. Had it been a mistake not to include her? Until her, Cooper had never worked with anyone who could match him. And she would be a huge asset if he had to sneak into…

What was the phrase the Irish used? You want to make God laugh, you make a plan.

As 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

It's the great equalizer: black or white, male or female, norm or abnorm, the first thing most people do in the morning—before they even brush their teeth—is reach for their d-pad.

When sirens lit up the darkness behind him, he jumped, then cursed. Must've zoned out, gotten heavy on the pedal—only no, the speedometer read sixty-seven. He'd been tired, but not so whacked that he'd drifted out of his lane. A broken taillight? It was after four in the morning; maybe the cops were just bored. Kevin

The scientist in him imagined the scientist in her; he sometimes pictured Violet as a tiny being in the cockpit of a vehicle she didn't understand. Row upon row of dials and switches and knobs, and no instruction manual. Nothing to do but stab and twist at random and see what happened. Punch that button, this appendage flaps. Interesting.

It's kind of a circle. When people are scared, it's easy for them to decide anything different is evil. To forget that everyone is basically the same, that we all love our families and want regular lives. And what makes it worse is that some people use that. They make others scared on purpose, because they know if they do, everyone will start acting stupid." "But why would they want that?" "It's a way to control people. A way to get what they want.

Something boring, so no one asks follow-up questions about it." "Accounting?

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

Protecting America is not a job for the squeamish.

The difference between a thug and a soldier, the guy had said, was the moral courage of his cause.

To learn the true value of something, all you had to do was lose it.

Good news, bad news.

Prometheus recast as a serial killer.

It had been a surprise—and yeah, okay, a pleasure—to realize how very good he was at being bad.

The world would be a better place if people stopped voting for folksy candidates they could have a beer with and started voting for people smarter than they are." Peters

Sheila, sweetheart, I'm dying here

To bear your weaponry so blatantly before you, to move through the world as a nightmare. The spider regarded him, and he regarded the spider.

It was like that old riddle about replacing the handle of an axe, and later the head—when you were done, was it a new axe or the old one?

The rats that had once fouled their food became their food. But soon the rats were gone.