Aaron Elkins > Quotes

“I can't claim that I came out of it the winner. But I felt a lot like a kid who has finally found the guts to stand up to the schoolyard bully and tell him to take his best shot: bruised and bloody and thinking maybe that it hadn't been such a hot idea, but - what do you know? - still standing.”
― Aaron Elkins, The Worst Thing

“When I walk into a house and see good paintings on the wall, I can smell money. But when I see tatty old carpets on the floor under them, I smell real money.”
― Aaron Elkins, Loot

“The thing is, women try to look slim-hipped like men, and they can’t. Not if they have any female hormones. The very thing that makes a woman so lovely is exactly what you have: a big, beautiful trochanteric subcutaneous adipose tissue deposit.”
― Aaron Elkins, Fellowship of Fear

“Nope. It’s an axiom of the trade: When a moving head hits a fixed object hard enough, you get a crack; when a moving object hits a fixed head you get a depressed fracture.”
― Aaron Elkins, Curses!

“gray-clad knees that hadn’t come within ten inches of the soil. “Shall we have a look at the remains?” he said. “Perhaps we’d better establish at once that we’re not dealing with a polydactylous pig.” “We’re not,” Gideon said. “I can see that from here.”
― Aaron Elkins, Old Bones

“understand it.” “Well, you’ve got him now,” John said. “You’ll”
― Aaron Elkins, Dying on the Vine

“According to Department of Customs records, 9,428 works by Rembrandt were imported into the U.S. from 1910 to 1950 alone. That works out to better than one every other day. Four a week, fifty-two weeks a year, for over forty years.”
― Aaron Elkins, Old Scores

“voluptuary”
― Aaron Elkins, Curses!

“Gideon Oliver was an essentially civil person, so that when he found himself in an unavoidable social situation he made the best of it. And when the food and wine were good, the conversation intelligent, and the women reasonably attractive, he had been known to actually enjoy himself.”
― Aaron Elkins, Fellowship of Fear

“The man was to be pitied, a simplistic dinosaur incapable of comprehending the new dynamics of the educational suprasystem and the role of academics as change-agents.”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones

“Welcome”
― Aaron Elkins, A Cruise to Die for

“Well, she certainly had a point there. It wasn’t easy remembering you were an august personage.”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones

“I’m not really sure how we’ve arrived at this ridiculous juncture, and I’d be a great deal happier if we weren’t pointing these things at one another, wouldn’t you?”
― Aaron Elkins, Fellowship of Fear

“Well, you know what they say: Maybe money doesn’t bring happiness, but it sure enough quiets the nerves.”
― Aaron Elkins, Old Bones

“things”
― Aaron Elkins, A Cruise to Die for

“The therapeutic-psychodrama group at Esalen had helped her get that unwholesome idea out of her mind,”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones

“Would you like to have”
― Aaron Elkins, A Cruise to Die for

“Naturally, potables stronger than Diet Coke are the responsibility of the individual. As always, cocktail hour begins at sunrise.”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones

“Psychiatric dogma to the contrary, one’s emotions would work out their own problems or they wouldn’t; thinking about them wouldn’t help.”
― Aaron Elkins, Fellowship of Fear

“sorting”
― Aaron Elkins, A Dangerous Talent

“Nate might be a poor dumb bastard, but at least he wasn’t a dishonest, fraudulent dumb bastard, and that ought to count for something.”
― Aaron Elkins, Murder in the Queen's Armes

“Ah!” Callie said, seizing on this, “what we expect of him. Couldn’t that be the problem right there? Have we tried to attune ourselves to his needs? Have we taken the trouble to understand where he’s coming from?”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones

“No more than a utilitarian structure when constructed in 1913 as headquarters for Lambert's first excavation, the plain, one-story stucco building had been going downhill ever since. For”
― Aaron Elkins, Dead Men's Hearts

“Where had the Taras and Megans and Ians come from? Buried in his work, had he missed some clandestine migration of Celts from across the sea?”
― Aaron Elkins, Old Bones

“Hyperbolic rodomantade of the most puerile type.”
― Aaron Elkins, Icy Clutches

“I don’t have to be right, I am right,”
― Aaron Elkins, Old Bones

“To appreciate a certain amount of material comfort,” Gideon continued, “does not mean you are not a real person.” Phil”
― Aaron Elkins, Little Tiny Teeth

“Gideon laughed and took his milkshake from the opened lid of the glove compartment.”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones

“HEIDELBERG is one of the very few German cities that was never bombed during World War II.”
― Aaron Elkins, Fellowship of Fear

“Hamburger, large fries, strawberry shake.” He turned back into the car. “Doc, you sure you don’t want something?” “No, thanks.” Gideon’s stomach still wasn’t quite settled, and the heat wasn’t helping. But he was thirsty. “Well, maybe a shake. Chocolate.” “And a chocolate shake,” John yelled into the mike. “Yo,” the speaker said metallically, and then a moment later: “That’ll be $3.54 at the first window, please.”
― Aaron Elkins, Make No Bones