Stephen Hunter > Quotes

“You’re a genius,” she said. “Hardly,” he said. “I just show up and pay attention.”
― Stephen Hunter, Sniper's Honor

“The worst moment was always taps. It didn’t matter if the bugler played it well or poorly, in tune or out; there was something in the mournful ache of the music, and how it spoke of men dying before their time for something they only vaguely understood and being only vaguely appreciated by the people on whose behalf they died, that made it hurt so much.”
― Stephen Hunter, Dirty White Boys

“These in the day when heaven was falling, when earth’s foundations fled, followed their mercenary calling, took their wages and are dead.”
― Stephen Hunter, Dead Zero

“Some are born jerks” she said, “some have jerkhood thrust upon them, and some mature into rich and vibrant jerks. You are all three.”
― Stephen Hunter, Dead Zero

“Yeats said, ‘Men of action, when they lose all belief, believe only in action.”
― Stephen Hunter, The 47th Samurai

“As I said, the good die young, and the motherfuckers go on forever, pardon my French.”
― Stephen Hunter, Sniper's Honor

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going in.” He turned to Swagger. “Sorry, old guy. A world where she dies so I can survive isn’t a world I choose to live in.”
― Stephen Hunter, Dead Zero

“A man may lie to his psychiatrist, his doctor, his wife, his employer, to God and to Mom, but his teeth tell all;”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“Your idealism will get you killed or, worse, knighted, and you’ll spend the rest of your days among fools and MPs. As for me, the chance to refuse an audience with the queen would be exquisite.”
― Stephen Hunter, I, Ripper: A Novel

“Our Director had a vision, Sheriff Swagger. He envisioned a scientific national police force, incorruptible, untainted by ego, vanity, and politics. Alas, as we have learned, that also meant untainted by experience, toughness, cunning, and marksmanship. Lawyers make poor gunfighters.”
― Stephen Hunter, G-Man

“I spent my life trying to get out of Oklahoma because I was too good for Oklahoma. Then I got to the Ivy League and the people seemed to be so, you know, little. They were fundamentally bigots. They”
― Stephen Hunter, Black Light

“He wanted to get away: this was like something out of Faulkner or Penn Warren, blasphemed southern ground, soaked in blood a generation old, white trash and black, white innocence and black, all commingled in a very small area on the same day.”
― Stephen Hunter, Black Light

“I was in a delirium of destruction, as if the body were an insult to the philosophy of my life, and only in destroying it could I reclaim my sanity.”
― Stephen Hunter, I, Ripper

“You know that easy money, stupid people, and hard times have a way of creating misery.”
― Stephen Hunter, Night of Thunder

“What he called his own personal night was about the feeling of being nothing, of having no worth, of having spent himself in a war nobody cared about, and having given up everything that was important and good.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“The public library was more accommodating;”
― Stephen Hunter, The Third Bullet

“But shooting a man takes one of two things: an overwhelming fear of one’s own death, which Nick did not have in the least; or conviction. It turned out he lacked this component as well.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“You are the most contrary man I ever met. If someone handed you a glass of free beer that was nine-tenths full, you’d cry over the missing tenth.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“And then there are the Germans. Do you know, they form words by just sticking them together, so that their word for ‘Gatling gun’ literally translates into ‘mechanicaldeviceshootingwithoutcockingrifle?’ The words get longer still. No word is too long for a German because it’s quite impossible to bore a German. You cannot entertain a Norwegian, you cannot bore a German, and you cannot educate an American or a chimpanzee.”
― Stephen Hunter, I, Ripper: A Novel

“I would advise you never to use the W-word today. The W-word is why. Sometimes there is no why, and if you get hung up on why, you lose your effectiveness. I’ve seen it happen. The men who die are the men who can’t believe they’re in a fight and can’t believe that someone is trying to kill them. It seems so unfair to them and they’re so busy feeling sorry for themselves, they don’t seek cover, they don’t return fire, they don’t scan the horizon, they forget how to use their expensive equipment. The men who live get it right away; they understand they’re in a different world and they have to deal with exactly what is before them with maximum concentration.”
― Stephen Hunter, Soft Target

“I deal in lead, friend.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“That’s what Nick ran into all the time on the streets. Somehow in America it had stopped being about us or we or the team or the family; it was this me-thing that turned people crazy. They expected so much. They thought they were so important. Everybody was an only child.”
― Stephen Hunter, Point of Impact

“If they’s interested, they wouldn’t believe it. If they believed it, they’d arrest me.”
― Stephen Hunter, G-Man

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
― Stephen Hunter, Sniper's Honor

“Bob,” she said, “I love you so and want you with me, but you are lying to me, and you are lying to yourself. I can hear it in your voice, and if you don’t get it settled in a way that satisfies you, it will suck the pleasure out of the peace you’ve earned. I know you. You are samurai, dog soldier, marine fool, crazy bastard, marshal of Dodge, commando, the country-western Hector. You are all of those things. They are your nature. The girls and I are just where you park when you’re not warring. You love us, yes you do, but war is your life, it’s your destiny, it’s your identity. My advice, old man, is win your war. Then come home. Or maybe you’ll get killed. That would be a shame and a tragedy, and the girls and I will weep for years. But that is the way of the warrior and we have the curse upon us of loving the last of them.”
― Stephen Hunter, I, Sniper

“In those days, the South was being prepared for the civil rights movement, which no matter what you might think, did not spring out of nowhere. For a decade, very brave young black ministers and young white volunteers traveled from church to church, where they tried to prepare the people for the dangerous work ahead.”
― Stephen Hunter, Black Light

“You know that easy money, stupid people, and hard times have a way of creating misery. Your”
― Stephen Hunter, Night of Thunder

“There is a paradox at the core of penology, and from it derives the thousand ills and afflictions of the prison system. It is that not only the worst of the young are sent to prison, but the best—that is, the proudest, the bravest, the most daring, the most enterprising and the most undefeated of the poor. There starts the horror. —Norman Mailer’s introduction to In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man.”
― Stephen Hunter, Dirty White Boys

“University, where she is an adjunct professor of education and serves on the Veterans Committee, among about a thousand other things. That’s heroism. I have taken the kernel of her story and do what I do, which is dramatize, romanticize, exaggerate, and open fire. Hence, Game of Snipers. Now, on to apologies, excuses, and evasions. Let me offer the first to Tel Aviv; Dearborn, Michigan; Greenville, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Rock Springs, Wyoming; and Anacostia, D.C. I generally go to places I write about to check the lay of streets, the fall of shadows, the color of police cars, and the taste of local beer. At seventy-three, such ordeals-by-airport are no longer fun, not even the beer part; I only go where there’s beaches. For this book, I worked from maps and Google, and any geographical mistakes emerge out of that practice. Is the cathedral three hundred yards from the courthouse in Wichita? Hmm, seems about right, and that’s good enough for me on this. On the other hand, I finally got Bob’s wife’s name correct. It’s Julie, right? I’ve called her Jen more than once, but I’m pretty sure Jen was Bud Pewtie’s wife in Dirty White Boys. For some reason, this mistake seemed to trigger certain Amazon reviewers into psychotic episodes. Folks, calm down, have a drink, hug someone soft. It’ll be all right. As for the shooting, my account of the difficulties of hitting at over a mile is more or less accurate (snipers have done it at least eight times). I have simplified, because it is so arcane it would put all but the most dedicated in a coma. I have also been quite accurate about the ballistics app FirstShot, because I made it up and can make it do anything I want. The other shot, the three hundred, benefits from the wisdom of Craig Boddington, the great hunter and writer, who looked it over and sent me a detailed email, from which I have borrowed much. Naturally, any errors are mine, not Craig’s. I met Craig when shooting something (on film!) for another boon companion, Michael Bane, and his Outdoor Channel Gun Stories crew. For some reason, he finds it amusing when I start jabbering away and likes to turn the camera on. Don’t ask me why. On the same trip, I also met the great firearms historian and all-around movie guy (he knows more than I do) Garry James, who has become”
― Stephen Hunter, Game of Snipers

“The Americans, he laughed drunkenly. They build more cars than anybody in the world, and take them out and dump them in terrible traffic jams. The only thing crazier than the Americans were the Russians, who never had traffic jams because they didn’t have cars.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight: A Novel