Quotes About Awareness

The west end guy peeled away from his window and started walking. Heading east. Fifteen feet behind Rutherford. Moving with loose, rangy ease. He was clearly having to shorten his stride to avoid overtaking his mark. Ahead of them a woman had stopped at the edge of the sidewalk to tend to a child in a stroller. Beyond her a couple stood, talking. They were dressed for the gym. Just regular folks. Not part of the pattern. Unaware of what was happening.

then what I know now. Which phrase is used a lot.

Maybe of not having to say if I had known then what I know now. Which phrase is used a lot.

I sat there in the armchair and felt bad. I'd lost something I never knew I'd had.

You can't be real-world smart and real-world dumb, all at the same time. You can't be rational and irrational. You can't deal with reality and simultaneously not deal with it.

outside the door. He breathed in, and he breathed

She looked away. Her name was Marilyn. Marilyn Stone. She had been married to Chester for a long time. She knew it all. She had no real details, no real proof, no inclusion, but she knew it all anyway. How could she not know? She had eyes and a brain.

And training has a purpose. It takes people who aren't necessarily very smart and it makes them seem smart by beating some basic tactical awareness into them. Until it becomes instinctive.

Never point a loaded gun at anything you don't definitely want to kill." She

house. Out of sight, out of mind. That was the way he wanted it. He crossed the shoulder and leaned on his mailbox, watching

When your instinct tells you something's wrong, then something's wrong. Always listen to your gut. It's what will save you from getting shoved into the back of some thug's car.

If I visit and he doesn't know I've visited, have I really visited at all? It's self-indulgent to come here just to make myself feel like a good wife.

identified, and

Smart people, working hard, paying attention, thinking laterally.

People see, but they don't look.

function for them? Or are you just some kind of onlooker?

presence. No

Don't give the man with the gun a reason to worry about you.

A guy who was taught the front-sight mantra might focus so hard he could lose his peripheral vision.

My driver asked, "Sir, do you have everything you need?" Which in an existential sense was a very big question, but I had no immediate requirements, so I just nodded in the mirror and stayed quiet.

About where you are now," she said. "For years you've laughed off the small things, but they come so thick and fast that eventually you realize an avalanche is made up of small things. Snowflakes, right? Things don't get much smaller than that. Suddenly you realize that small things are big things.

What I didn't understand, all those years when I was waiting for my life to start, was that it had already started. I was already living it! Those were the most important years, and I didn't even know it.

For once I am living my life rather than watching it pass in review.

Sleep that day was a warm pool in which I dove and stayed, sporadically lifting my head to sense the world.