"The devil's greatest achievement was convincing everyone that he didn't exist."

--paraphrased from Kevin Spacey's character in The Usual Suspects

     "They think you're a gold digger," my mom said. "There are rumors there's a contract out on you."

     "Half the people in the Burg have contracts on them," Grandma said. "Nothing ever happens because all the mob hit men are in their eighties and have macular degeneration and clogged-up arteries. It's not a job for those millennials. Too much work. Too mess. And you gotta learn a lot of skills."

--Twisted Twenty-Six 

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind and not with it."

--Henry Ford

"An ax came through the door. Then two firefighters. They looked down at an assistant mall manager crying and wearing a melted toupee, sitting cross-legged next to a mall cop with a bleeding ankle and a mouth full of paper.

"One of the firefighters looked at the other. 'Not again.'"

--When Elves Attack by Tim Dorsey

"Behind Coop, the floor rumbled. He allowed himself one quick glance over his shoulder. It was a terrible idea. While technically, knowing that you’re being pursued by a ravening horde is useful information, it isn’t all that helpful when you’re not sure you have a way out."

--The Wrong Dead Guy by Richard Kadrey

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was, and never will be.  

--Thomas Jefferson

"When I walked into the yard everything went quiet. The kids all stopped and stared at me.... All those little bright eyes on me were just waiting to get back to the business of noise. Not one of them looked hungry or tired. And I'm willing to bet that they would look back on the days of Mrs. Harris's yard with the greatest pleasure. Running wild with the animals before the hunters started tracking them down."

--from Black Betty by Walter Mosely

"Jackson Blue had a brilliant mind, he might have been a genius, but he was cowardly and blustery to the core. If he could have put it in a jar, Jackson would have sold his soul for tonight's dinner or, even better, for fifteen minutes with a whore.

"If there is a God he was drinking or mad the night he put Jackson together. Scrawny, lying, and afraid of his own footsteps, Jackson was one of the many friends who would never abandon me--he had nowhere else to go.

"The same God who made Jackson Blue took a crocodile to make the man I was facing.