Quotes About Risk

If there are no things which are important, then things are assigned importance arbitrarily and defended at great risk. Because the risk validates the importance.

I guess I mean that nature hates a vacuum. If there are no things which are important, then things are assigned importance arbitrarily and defended at great risk. Because the risk validates the importance.

Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures.

The fact that one thing precedes another doesn't mean one thing causes another." "Oh," she said. "I know all that. But do I want to risk getting killed for some fucking formal logic rule?" "No," I said. "You don't.

Asking your husband to go one-on-one with Joe Broz is like putting a guppy in the piranha pool. If we don't find him before Broz does, he'll be eaten alive.

Go jogging? And get hit by a meteor?

Mother would be in real trouble right now.

Norman sighed and shook his head. He couldn't afford the risk. Not while that thing still sprawled in the shower stall back at the motel. Leaving it there was even more risky.

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.

Listen, old goat, today doesn't matter and tomorrow doesn't matter. It's the end of the game that counts and how many chips you've got in your pocket -- if you're still playing.

If I'd knowed we'd be a-finding gold, I'd a stayed down in the tepee, because there ain't much worse can happen to a body

So when a Vietnam-era fighter pilot says he flew up north, that means he ripped off the front gate of hell and flew into the deadliest air-defense system ever devised.

LARKIN WATCHED Pike leaving, and in the moment he stepped outside, he was framed in the open door of their Echo Park house like a picture in a magazine, frozen in time and space. A big man, but not a giant. More average in size than not. With the sleeves covering his arms, and his face turned away, he seemed heartbreakingly normal, which made her love him even more. A superman risked nothing, but an average man risked everything.

If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun.

Deep purple moved through the blue as Pike left. Pike was creepy good at this stuff, but Pike had taken a serious risk by entering Jon's home. A cocked-and-locked Kimber .45 was only inches away, not that it had done Jon any good. Embarrassing. Jon

Pike didn't know what he would find or if he would find anything, but the Malibu's back seat was filled with their duffels and sleeping bags. Pike checked to make sure no one was watching, then used a jiggler key to open the car. Pike

Pike didn't believe he would find anything, but he had to check, so he did, ignoring her. Pike had learned this with the Marines—the one time a man didn't clean his rifle, that's when it jammed; the one time you didn't tape down a buckle or secure your gear, the noise it made got you killed.

Pike tapped Jon's leg, and Jon rolled on, cruising back to their cars. Everything moved quickly after their brief reconnoiter, which was how Pike liked it. Speed was good. In armed confrontations, speed was the difference between life and death. Cole

Pike hung up, and I stood in the center of the kitchen and listened to the silence. Someone had been in my home, and it made me feel creepy and violated and angry. I pulled out the Dan Wesson, sat it on the kitchen counter, and crossed my arms. "Let's see'm come back now." Acting tough will sometimes help, but not always, and the gun did not lessen the feeling that I was vulnerable and at risk. They seldom do.

I said, "Okay, Luke. Here's my problem. I suspect that your mentor, Mr. Green, is suborning testimony. I think he may even be involved in murder, only I can't figure out why a man in his position and of his stature would risk his ass by so doing. Do you understand that?

We pulled into Spago and let the valet have the car. Lucy suggested that I wear my Groucho Marx nose as a disguise to prevent adoring fans from mobbing me, but I pointed out that then everyone might think I was Groucho Marx and I would be mobbed anyway. I decided to risk going as myself.

dead coals can be hot enough to start a fire that will burn down an entire forest.

We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer.

Related lessons: Don't go hunting ghosts, and don't get too deep into a situation where your civilizational advantage is of little help.