Quotes from Nelson DeMille

On the subject of motive, there are, generally speaking, six major motives for murder. Ready? They

The least free people in a free society are people like us who have a sworn duty to defend the constitution.

It struck him that the world was full of professional snoops, and it was sad that Americans didn't even trust Americans anymore.

concurring.' But now we know what I suspected. Two people on the board voted for acquittal, which means there are

There were two display windows, one on each side of the door, and in the windows were…well, books. What this street really needed was a bar.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His laws. —John Adams

The world doesn't try to screw you; the world is indifferent to you. But people try to screw you, and people need to know when they've picked the wrong guy to screw. And that's me.

We entered the house, and there was that pregnant silence in the air, the silence between a husband and wife who have just had words, and it is unlike any other silence except perhaps the awful stillness you hear between the flash of an atomic bomb and the blast.

Geniuses don't seem to have much tolerance for people who annoy them, or hinder them, and they tend to think they are not subject to the same rules of behavior as the mass of humanity. They are often unhappy and impatient people, and they can also be sociopaths, and sometimes psychopaths who

In our pursuit of fidelity within a twenty-year-old marriage, Susan and I, in addition to the historical romances, sometimes talk about a premarital lover as part of our foreplay. I read in a book once that it was all right to do this, to get the juices going, but afterward, as you're both lying there, one partner is usually sullen and the other is sorry he or she was so graphic. Well, if you play with fire to get heat, you can also get burned.

We're not thieves. We're repatriating money that rich Cubans stole from poor Cubans so it can be returned to the rich Cubans who stole it.

this was the Middle East. The land of the mirage, the shimmering pond in the sand that drew you farther into the deadly desert, and when you arrived at the lifesaving water, it disappeared, and you discovered the bones of those who'd been there before you. You discovered death.

The short-timers, who'd gone through hell without even a small pee in their pants, were all jittery that something was going to happen before they boarded the freedom bird home. I mean, after you've cheated death for so long, you become paranoid, sure that death had just remembered you were leaving.

You have very little rape experience. Now, here we have a rope homicide

Depression, the war, and the ninety-percent tax rates of the forties and fifties, there was less and less of this paper, and it finally vanished as mysteriously as it had first appeared.

Flynn looked back over the Cathedral and glanced at the blueprints. This building was shaped like a cross.

My problem is with supervisors who bullshit me and expect loyalty in return. The essence of loyalty is reciprocity. If you're loyal to me, I'll be loyal to you. Bullshit me, and I'll bullshit you. That's the contract.

For a writer, a journey of a thousand miles begins in a library and ends at the typewriter.

Boris, in fact, had once worked in a secret training camp in Russia, a KGB facility, called, Khalil remembered, Mrs. Ivanova's Charm School, where Russian spies had learned to become Americans.

He looked around the crowded room. "The walls have ears." "Actually, they have termites. And no one here cares what we're talking about. Look, Mr. Macia, you have offered me two million dollars and it will not surprise you that I could use the money, but—

lies are like cockroaches—if you see one, there are others.

Warnings, on the other hand, are for places that the U.S. government considers fucked-up on a more long-term basis. Venezuela fell into the latter category. A State Department warning was not good for tourism.

These types of books usually tried to be a little PC and pull some punches when discussing the questionable locales their readers had chosen to travel to. Mogadishu has a rich and vibrant cultural heritage, but do your best to never leave your hotel.

When you cheat at poker, life, or taxes, you've taken the honor and fun out of winning, and ultimately you've cheated yourself out of the finest pleasure in life: beating the other guy fair and square. That's what I was taught in school.