Quotes from Richard Condon

It was Christmas Eve. Raymond had invited Marco for dinner, telephoning him from the office to say that he had given Chunjin the night off and that Chunjin had resisted. Marco said that was because Chunjin was undoubtedly a Buddhist and not a celebrant at Christmas.

Marco was an intelligent intelligence officer.

The first thing a human being is loyal to, Yen Lo observed, is his own conditioned nervous system.

How can I continue to live, he shouted at high scream under the nave of his encompassing skull, if people are going to continue to carry bundles of pain on top of their heads like Haitian laundresses, then fling the bundles at random into the face of any bright stroller who happened to be passing by?

Of these, 79 had actually been removed from the service." Raymond's mother's subtraction of 79 cases from 286 cases left 207 cases, the number with which she had had Johnny kick off. She had made one other small change. The Secretary's actual language had been "recommendation against permanent employment," which she had changed to read: "members of the Communist party," which Johnny had adjusted to read: "card-carrying Communists.

I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It's the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what's going to happen three hours from now.

Made by General Motors, on order from Sears Roebuck.

Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it's the resenters who make their best instruments because the resenters, those men with cancer of the psyche, make the great assassins.

Cheese. The adult form of milk.