James W. Hall > Quotes

“He'd felt the same way some nights on patrol, hearing the jungle shift and creak around him in the dark. His head saying, go ahead, take your best shot, I'm not scared of you slanty-eyed buttwipes. And at the same time his heart was trying to parachute out his asshole.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground

“How his family was killed. Fakhri and his thugs raiding villages, burning, raping. Sunnis, Shi’a, Alawites, Christians, everybody killing everybody else. People say the Mafia’s bad. Mafia’s nothing next to those fucking religions.”
― James W. Hall, When They Come for You

“thuds”
― James W. Hall, When They Come for You

“And damn it, looking at her, her eyes steady and unfazed, he had to admit that what he'd said, dangling there now in the warm night air, it sounded ludicrous. Like one of those things you harbor in some quiet passage of your mind, some private bias you conceal, feasting on it so long that it solidifies, and eventually seems indisputable, rock-hard belief. But the first time you put air to it, give it voice, the whole mountainous construction sounds so preposterous, so embarrassingly dumb, it completely evaporates.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground

“Everyone was riding in a yellow submarine, and their friends were all aboard, a thousand feet deep in an ocean of deceits. As tempting as it was, Thorn didn’t completely buy that easy cynicism. Stories might be lies, they might be man-made inventions, but the purposes they served were absolutely necessary. They gave respite and order in the face of chaos. They were temporary strongholds pitched in the wilderness where we hunkered down, lit our fires, cooked our food, and breathed easy as the night beasts howled incessantly beyond the make-believe walls.”
― James W. Hall, Bad Axe

“You start thinking about Yeats, him saying that life was a long preparation for something that never happens. You just got to wait it out.”
― James W. Hall, Tropical Freeze

“All you need is love. It sounded true but wasn’t. You needed a hell of a lot more than that. You needed tolerance and self-control, and you needed empathy and strength and discipline and flexibility. You needed serenity and good luck.”
― James W. Hall, Bad Axe

“Ze glimlachte naar hem. "Op momenten zoals deze krijg je maar één kans.”
― James W. Hall, Blackwater Sound

“Because these characters perform against the vast backdrops of American politics and social upheaval, and because their personal destinies, their wishes, and their dreams are inextricably fused with the largest and most crucial concerns of the nation, Scarlett and Mitch and Jack and Scout and the others cannot help but stir us. They are ordinary American folks from humble roots who have answered some resounding call and risen beyond their limitations to impossible heights. If their battles had been smaller, less important, less connected to the national pulse, frankly, most of us wouldn’t have given a damn.”
― James W. Hall, Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers

“If he could not find the exact words for something, it did not fully exist. And if he could say it well enough, almost anything was possible. X-88”
― James W. Hall, The Big Finish

“On land there was no choice. You conformed to the rigid structures others had left behind. But out there on the bay, it was different. Everything was fluid. Go here, go there. No signs, no narrow lanes, no walls, no paths worn into the water. Out there you were restricted only by the draft of your boat, your energy and will. Your imagination.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground

“isn’t the greatest loss in life,’” Lawton said to Anne. “‘The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
― James W. Hall, Off The Chart

“You don't have any morals, do you, Senator? You're worse than me, do any fucking thing to get what you want." Against his chest she said, "Some people are chosen, Ray. I'm one of those. I make morals, I don't follow them." "I like that. You make morals. That's good." She said, "Morals are for the masses, the little people, to keep them from too much independent thinking.”
― James W. Hall, Hard Aground